SC stays criminal defamation case against Tharoor over comments on PM Modi – Times of India

The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed proceedings against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in a criminal defamation case filed against him in 2018 over his remark about Prime Minister Modi, in which he sits on a Shivling. A bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and R Mahadevan granted interim relief to Tharoor who approached the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court rejected his plea seeking quashing of proceedings against him in the case.
The court noted that the sentence used by Tharoor is a metaphor which can be interpreted in different ways. “It is a metaphor. The metaphor is said to refer to the invincibility of the person being talked about. Cannot the metaphor be understood as pointing to the invincibility of the person?” the court asked.
Appears before Tharoor, Advocate MD Ali Khantold SC that the MP, while speaking at the Bangalore Literature Festival in 2018, had just quoted from an article published in The Caravan magazine in 2012, which carried the same comment by an unnamed RSS functionary. SC also raised the question as to why anyone should object to this. BJP member Rajeev Babbar had filed a complaint alleging that his religious sentiments and the faith of millions of Shiva devotees had been hurt by Tharoor’s remark.