Face consequences: Supreme Court to Sisodia in Himanta criminal defamation case

NEW DELHI: Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia will have to face criminal defamation proceedings for allegations of corruption against Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma with the Supreme Court on Monday turning down his plea for quashing of the case and saying that the AAP functionary should have apologised for his remarks.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Abhay S Oka made it clear that it would not be fit for the court to interfere with the proceedings and disapproved of Sisodia’s statement. The case pertains to an allegation levelled by Sisodia accusing Sarma of indulging in corruption while supplying PPE kits in the state in 2020.
“If you reduce public debate to this level then you have to face consequences... You should have tendered an unconditional apology,” the bench said.
Appearing for Sisodia, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi tried to convince the bench that it was not a defamatory statement and his client did not say that the Assam chief minister was corrupt. The bench, however, was not convinced after going through the transcript of the statement. “You said Assam ke BJP CM ke bhrastachar ka ye hai kacha chittha. What does it mean? I don’t have to explain to you what this means. Your Hindi is as good as mine,” the bench told Singhvi.
Earlier, the Gauhati high court had in November dismissed a petition by Sisodia seeking quashing of the proceedings. The high court had dismissed his plea for quashing Sarma’s case on the grounds that the Delhi deputy chief minister “has not been able to make out any case for quashing the lower court case”. The opposite party — state of Assam and its chief minister — did not even have to argue the case.
Rejecting Sisodia’s plea that no sanction was taken prior to prosecuting him, the HC had said “as the petitioner has not been able to demonstrate that as a deputy chief minister for the state of NCT of Delhi, he was performing any public duty or was carrying out his prescribed duty as a government servant to hold a press conference under the banner of Aam Aadmi Party and make statement allegedly or purportedly exposing commission of alleged corrupt practice of the petitioner, the court is of the considered opinion that there was no requirement of obtaining any prior sanction under Section 197 CrPC to prosecute the petitioner by way of a complaint petition for committing alleged defamation”.
However, the SC accepted Singhvi’s plea to be allowed to withdraw Sisodia’s petition and contest the case in trial court.