Delhi Court Dismisses Medha Patkar’s Appeal Against Conviction in Defamation Case

NEW DELHI:
A court here on Wednesday dismissed an appeal filed by activist Medha Patkar challenging her conviction in a criminal defamation case initiated against her by V.K. Saxena, now Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, back in 2001.

Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Vishal Singh of the Saket Court dismissed the appeal and maintained the conviction order.

The court will hear the submissions, including those of Patkar’s counsel, on the quantum of sentence in the post-lunch session.

On July 1, last year, the Saket Court had sentenced Medha Patkar, the leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), to five months of simple imprisonment in the criminal defamation case.

Metropolitan Magistrate Raghav Sharma of the Saket Court also ordered Patkar to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation to Saxena for the harm caused to his reputation. Advocate Gajinder Kumar strongly presented the case in the court.

Kumar, along with advocates Kiran Jai, Chandra Shekhar, Drishti, and Somya Arya, represented L-G Saxena before the Saket court.

Patkar had been found guilty by the trial court of criminal defamation under Section 500 of the now-repealed Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Saxena had filed the case against Patkar in 2001 when he was the Chief of the National Council for Civil Liberties, an Ahmedabad-based NGO. The defamation case stemmed from a series of legal disputes that began in 2000. At that time, Patkar filed a suit against Saxena for publishing advertisements that she claimed were defamatory towards her and the NBA.

In response, Saxena filed two defamation cases against Patkar — one for alleged derogatory remarks she made about him during a television appearance, while the second case involved a press statement issued by Patkar.

Recently, Judicial Magistrate First Class Raghav Sharma of the Saket Court turned down Patkar’s plea to introduce a new witness in her counter-case of defamation against Saxena.

“If this witness was genuinely relevant, his/her name or role in the case would have been mentioned at some point during the last 24 years of proceedings. The complete absence of any reference to this witness further suggests that it is an afterthought, possibly introduced to bolster the complainant’s case artificially,” the court said in its order dated March 18.