The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a stay on the proceedings against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in a criminal defamation case stemming from his 2018 remarks that compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a scorpion. The bench, comprised of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and R Mahadevan, also issued a notice to BJP leader Rajiv Babbar, who is the complainant in the case, requesting his response within four weeks.
During the proceedings, the justices highlighted that Tharoor’s comment was intended as a metaphor, expressing surprise at the offence it had caused. “The remark was a metaphor, which is good enough to substitute thousand words…If the metaphor is understood in the manner we understand it, we don’t know why somebody has taken offence,” the bench observed.
The case against Tharoor was based on a statement he made during the Bengaluru Literature Festival on October 28, 2018, where he described Modi as “a scorpion sitting on a Shivling.” This was allegedly a reference to a remark made by Gordhan Zadaphia in a magazine back in 2012. Tharoor’s legal team argued that his statement fell within the exceptions of Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with defamation, suggesting it was made in good faith and was not his original thought but a repetition of a previously published quote.
The Delhi High Court had earlier dismissed Tharoor’s plea to quash the defamation proceedings and directed him to appear before the trial court on September 10, 2024. The High Court had stated that there were no justifiable reasons to dismiss the proceedings at that stage.
Tharoor contended that as the comments were not his own opinions but rather a repetition of an existing statement, the complainant did not have standing under the defamation section of the IPC to file the case.
