NEW DELHI: A Delhi court dismissed Tuesday a defamation complaint filed by BJP functionary Rajeev Chandrashekhar against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, saying if every speech was viewed as defamation then “freedom of speech and expression would be reduced to nought”.
The court of additional chief judicial magistrate Paras Dalal noted there is “no prima facie evidence” that the Thiruvananthapuram MP made any imputation against Chandrashekhar. It is noteworthy to see how interviews, words, etc., can be manipulated to mean differently with some outside context or interpretation attributed to such words, it said.
Chandrashekhar accused Tharoor of defaming him by making false and derogatory statements during an interview on national television. He alleged that Tharoor said Chandrashekhar had bribed voters in the constituency during 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The allegations were published by various news channels as well as on social media platforms, hurting his reputation and leading to his losing the Lok Sabha seat he was contesting against Tharoor, said Chandrashekhar.
The court took cognisance of the criminal complaint in Sept 2024. The court noted that when read in whole, the 23-minute video seems like a civilised conversation between two persons and provides a full context of what was asked and what was answered. It stated that a bit and piece of any answer, when presented to sensationalise with some random context by a third person, can present a completely different picture.
“The same has been done in the 3.54-minute video played for viewers to be consumed as early morning breaking news. Neither the anchor nor the reporter of thevideo was present in the interview with the proposed accused Tharoor. The anchor, however, makes no disclosure that there was a complete 23-minute interview which is to be viewed before judging the context in which Tharoor gave answers, yet the anchor opens with his own narrative and gives a context of what is to follow. The anchor never referred to the question which was put by the interviewer/CW10 and, after his own narration, played a few answers of the proposed accused,” said the court.
The court asserted that a news channel can easily fall into the scheme of sentimentalisation. In today’s period, the news presented for consumption requires sensationalising. It noted that Tharoor, in subsequent interviews, brushed aside the news as without proof and left it to the people of the constituency to make a fair judgment.
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