New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday observed that it is time defamation should be decriminalised as it stayed a trial proceeding against news portal The Wire on a complaint filed by former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor Amita Singh over a news report alleging that she submitted a dossier on an alleged sex racket in the University.
A bench of justices MM Sundresh and SC Sharma said, “Time has come to decriminalise section 499 of the Indian Penal Code.” Defamation is punishable under this provision.
Issuing notice on a petition filed by the portal owner Foundation for Independent Journalism, the bench ordered stay on the trial proceedings .
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for the foundation said, “This issue is pending before this court in a petition filed by Rahul Gandhi.” Sibal was referring to a petition filed by the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha challenging the summoning orders against him in a defamation case over his remarks against VD Savarkar.
The court allowed the present petition to be tagged with the pending matters.
The foundation approached the top court against the May 7 order of the Delhi high court refusing to quash the summoning order of the trial court issued on January 13 this year.
Singh, in her capacity as Chairperson of Centre for Study of Law and Governance at JNU, filed the defamation case before the trial court on May 12, 2016 against The Wire and its deputy editor Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprastha for publishing the story .
This is not the first time the matter has come to the top court. In July last year, the top court directed continuation of the trial by setting aside a Delhi high court order quashing the summons in March, 2023. This order was challenged by Singh who claimed that the HC failed to see the content of the news report before setting aside the summons.
The top court, in its order of July 24, 2024, held that the HC erred by entering the merits of the case and directed the magistrate’s court to take a fresh call on issuance of summons.
In these proceedings, JNU filed a response denying receipt of any dossier of this description, as alleged in the news report. Singh too denied the contents of the report attributing the preparation of the dossier to her. She stated that this imputation was circulated widely in the social media that tarnished her image as a professor and made her a victim of a hate campaign owing to the defamatory article.
Following the top court’s July 2024 order, the Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) took further documents on record and issued the summons. The news portal argued before the high court that the JMFC should have issued them fresh notices to ascertain if a case was made out.
The high court order of May 7 rejected this argument.
