New Delhi: A Delhi court dismissed a defamation complaint Filed by official BJP Rajev Chandrashekhar Against the deputy of the Congress Shashi Tharoor, saying if each speech was seen as defamation then “freedom of speech And the expression would be reduced to nothing. “
The Court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Paras Dalal, said that “there is no evidence Prima Facie” that Thiruvananthapuram deputy made some imputation against Chandrashekhar. It is remarkable to see how interviews, words, etc., can be manipulated to mean differently with some external context or interpretation attributed to such words, he said.
Chandrashekhar accused Tharoor to defame him by making false and derogatory statements during an interview on national television. He claimed that Tharoor said that Chandrashekhar had bribed the voters in the constituency during the 2024 Lok Sabha surveys. The accusations were published by several news channels, as well as on social media platforms, hurting his reputation and led him to lose Lok Sabha seat that he was playing against Tharoor, said Chandrashekhar.
The Court took the knowledge of the criminal complaint in September 2024. The court indicated that when read in its entirety, the 23 -minute video seems like a civilized conversation between two people and provides a complete context of what was asked and what that was answered. He declared that a little and a part of any response, when presented to sensationalize with some random context by a third person, can present a completely different image.
“The same has been done in the 3.54 -minute video that is reproduced so that the spectators are consumed as last -hour news in the morning. Neither the presenter nor the reporter of Thevideo were present in the interview with the proposed defendant Tharoor. Anchor, however, is not disseminated that there was a full 23 -minute interview that must be seen before judging the context in which Tharoor gave answers, but the anchor opens with his own narrative and gives a context of what he should continue.
The court said that a news channel can easily fall into the sentimentalization scheme. In today’s period, the news presented for consumption requires sensationalization. He pointed out that Tharoor, in later interviews, set aside the news as without evidence and left the people of the constituency to make a fair judgment.