NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday (September 10) stayed the proceedings in the criminal defamation complaint against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor over a “scorpion sitting on a Shivling” remark made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018.Tharoor, an MP from Thiruvananthapuram, was scheduled to appear before the trial court on Tuesday in response to the defamation suit filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Rajiv Babbar.The Supreme Court, comprising Justices Hrishikesh Roy and R. Mahadevan, issued notices to the complainant Babbar and the Delhi government regarding Tharoor’s plea to quash the defamation case.The bench directed the parties to file their detailed responses and scheduled the matter for further hearing in four weeks.During Tuesday’s hearing, advocate Muhammad Ali Khan, representing Tharoor, argued that the statement was shielded under the immunity clause of the defamation law, which protects comments made in good faith from criminal liability.Khan also contended that Tharoor’s remark was derived from a 2012 article about Modi when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.Tharoor had approached the Supreme Court on Monday against a Delhi trial court’s order, which mandated his personal appearance in the defamation case initiated by BJP leader Rajiv Babbar. Advocate Mohammed Ali Khan, appearing for Tharoor, submitted that he merely quoted from an article published by The Caravan magazine in 2012, which contained an alleged remark by an unnamed RSS leader comparing Narendra Modi to “a scorpion sitting on a Shivling”.While speaking at the Bangalore Literature Festival in 2018, Tharoor quoted this expression and termed it an “extraordinarily striking metaphor”, the counsel said.Following this, Babbar filed the defamation suit against Tharoor.On Tuesday, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and including Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, did not grant Tharoor’s request for an urgent hearing but assured his counsel that the Court would consider the matter. “Please send an email. We will look at it,” the Court instructed his lawyer.Earlier, on August 9, the Delhi High Court had rejected Tharoor’s plea to dismiss the criminal defamation case. Justice Anup Kumar Mendiratta’s ruling overturned the previous interim order that had halted the proceedings, mandating the parties to appear before the trial court on September 10. The High Court stated that there were insufficient grounds to dismiss the case at this stage, noting, “There are no justifiable reasons to dismiss the proceedings at this stage.”Tharoor contends that he was merely echoing a quote from Gordhan Zadaphia, which has been in the public domain for several years. His defense argues that Tharoor’s comments were not original opinions but a repetition of an existing statement, and that Babbar, the complainant, lacks standing under Section 499 (Defamation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to file the case.Tharoor’s legal team has asserted that Babbar’s complaint is baseless and misleading, and that the trial court’s summons was both erroneous and contrary to established criminal jurisprudence principles.
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