‘Can petitioner go on defaming people?’

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court rejected on Friday AAP functionary Raghav Chadha 's plea to wriggle out of trial in a Rs 10-crore defamation case filed by finance minister Arun Jaitley against him and five others, including Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal , on the contention that there was no law making a re-tweet defamatory.Chadha's counsel, Anand Grover , argued that his client had been summoned by the trial court without there being any law to prosecute a re-tweet of an allegedly defamatory tweet by Kejriwal. "There is no law and no ruling by any court in the world declaring that re-tweet of a tweet amounts to publication of defamatory material which could be liable for prosecution," Grover said.A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud disagreed with Grover's contention. Justice Chandrachud said, "Take for example a tweet which is per se derogatory, abusive or contains graphic pornographic material. Can one who re-tweets such a tweet say he has only re-tweeted the material and is not the author of it and hence should not face prosecution?"Can one who re-tweets say he was completely oblivious to the contents of the tweet even if it is highly derogatory and pornographic?” Justice Chandrachud asked.Grover said a re-tweet was an issue covered under the Information Technology Act and since Section 66A was deleted by the apex court in the Shreya Singhal case, there was no provision in the IT Act to prosecute defamation.“Section 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code cannot apply to an alleged offence under the Information Technology Act,” he said.Contesting Grover’s plea that defamation was not covered under the IT Act, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Jaitley, said, “Does the petitioner mean that he can go on defaming people on Twitter and not face any prosecution? A field of law on defamation stands covered under Sections 499 and 500 of the IPC and naturally it would apply to prosecute people who commit the offence of defamation.”Jaitley’s other counsel, Ranjit Kumar and Sidharth Luthra, said if Grover thought there was no judgment on whether a re-tweet of a tweet amounted to committing the same offence as had been done by the author of the tweet, then he should await the trial court’s decision. This could be the first ruling on this issue.Citing the Centre’s recent decision to set up 12 special courts to fast-track trials against politicians facing criminal cases, Rohatgi said in a lighter vein, “Let the Supreme Court direct this defamation case be sent to one of the special courts so constituted. Both parties in the case are politicians.”Jaitley had filed a criminal defamation case against Kejriwal and five other Aam Aadmi Party functionaries — Ashutosh, Kumar Vishwas, Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpai. In his complaint, Jaitley accused Kejriwal and the others of defaming him in a controversy regarding the Delhi and District Cricket Association, of which he was president from 2000 to 2013. He has sought Rs 10 crore in damages.