Madras HC Quashes Defamation Case Against TN Assembly Speaker For A Speech Allegedly Mocking AIADMK Party Members
The Madras High Court has quashed a defamation complaint filed against the Speaker of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Muthuvelaydha Perumal Appavu.
The complaint was filed under Sections 499 and 500 of the IPC by R.M. Babu Murugavel (complainant), Joint Secretary of the AIADMK’s State Legal Wing, alleging that statements made by Appavu (petitioner) at a book release event were defamatory. However, the Court pointed out that the reaction of the Organising Secretary of AIADMK D. Jayakumar to the alleged defamatory speech was “denied as not true, but not been taken as an offensive or defamatory imputation to demean AIADMK party or its members.”
A Single Bench of Justice G. Jayachandran stated, “The speech of Mr. Appavu and the instant reaction of Mr. D. Jayakumar, Organising Secretary of AIADMK party is very clear. The statement is denied as not true, but not been taken as an offensive or defamatory imputation to demean AIADMK party or its members. It is to be noted that Mr. D. Jayakumar was MLA and Minister on the day, when one of AIADMK party MLA and the Deputy Secretary Mr. T.T.V. Dinakaran went to Tihar jail on 26.04.2017. On that day the petitioner R.M.Babu Murugavel was not even a member of AIADMK party.”
Senior Advocate P. Wilson appeared for the petitioner, while Senior Advocate R. John Sathyan represented the respondent.
The complainant alleged that the “malicious imputation” by the petitioner was made with the intention to create “an illusory opinion among the public” of the AIADMK party with the insinuation that several AIADMK MLAs were prepared to defect to the ruling DMK.
The petitioner submitted that the complainant had “cherry picked” a part of his speech to mislead. The speech related to an event a few years ago when the AIADMK party lost its Leader and struggled with in-fight. It was argued that the complainant was not in AIADMK party at the time and he cannot claim any knowledge about what transpired at that point of time within the party.
The speech of the petitioner as reported in Indian Express read, “On the day TTV Dhinakaran went to Tihar jail, a friend of mine called me and said 40 AIADMK MLAs are ready to shift their loyalty since they don't know where to go. Immediately I thought the DMK was out of power for 10 years and using this (if DMK formed the government) we could give local body posts to two crore persons if we conduct local body elections, and one lakh people could be given posts in cooperative departments. So, the DMK should utilize this opportunity and I conveyed this to Stalin. Two days later, Stalin said only with popular mandate, the DMK will come to power and not otherwise. He took such a principled stand.”
The Court referred to the Supreme Court’s decision in Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India (2016) for the interpretation of the expression “some person aggrieved” under Section 199 (2) of the CrPC wherein it was held that “by giving a benefit to a public servant employed in connection with the affairs of the Union or of a State in respect of his conduct in the discharge of public functions to file the case through the Public Prosecutor, apart from saving his right under sub-section (6) of Section 199 CrPC, the provision becomes discriminatory.”
Consequently, the Court quashed the complaint “for want of locus standi” and observed, “Thus, it is clear that 'some person aggrieved' but must be the person aggrieved in any manner. In the instant case, the alleged imputation of Mr.Appavu directed against 40 MLAs of AIADMK party during the year 2017, will not cover the complainant even remotely. If he claims that he carries the sword for his newly embraced party, he must have expressed authorisation to represent his party. Whereas, the complaint is in his personal capacity and not in the representative capacity.”
Accordingly, the High Court allowed the petition.
Cause Title: Muthuvelaydha Perumal Appavu @ M. Appavu v. R.M. Babu Murugavel