Arvind Kejriwal Asks Court To Scrap Defamation Case Filed By BJP MLA

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has moved the Delhi High Court for scrapping of the defamation complaint against him by BJP leader Vijender Gupta and summons issued to him in the matter.

When the matter came up for hearing before Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri on Tuesday, the judge observed that there was a high court ruling which said whether re-tweets would constitute an offence of defamation under the Indian Penal Code has to be determined during trial.

The court asked Mr Kejriwal's lawyers to go through the judgement to ascertain whether it would be applicable in the instant case and listed it for hearing on August 23.

Mr Gupta, in his complaint, had accused Mr Kejriwal and Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia of "maligning" his image by allegedly accusing him on Twitter of being part of an alleged "conspiracy" to kill the AAP chief.

The AAP convenor, represented by senior advocate Vikas Pahwa and advocate R Arunadhri Iyer, has claimed that he had neither mentioned Mr Gupta in his tweet nor made any allegations against him.

His lawyers, however, admitted that the AAP chief had re-tweeted Mr Sisodia's tweet but with his own comment in which also Gupta was not mentioned by name.

Mr Kejriwal, in his plea filed through advocate Mohd Irsad, has contended that he has neither made any defamatory comment against Mr Gupta nor mentioned his name and therefore, the offence was not made out against him.

After Mr Kejriwal was slapped in May this year during the general election campaign, he had alleged on Twitter that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wanted to get him killed by his own personal security officer (PSO) in the manner in which Indira Gandhi had been assassinated.

In response to his comments, Mr Gupta had said that Mr Kejriwal was slapped because he had relaxed his security cordon.

To this, Mr Sisodia had tweeted that there was a conspiracy to kill the Delhi Chief Minister and that Mr Gupta was allegedly part of it.