On Thursday, the Delhi High Court dismissed Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s request to quash the ongoing defamation proceedings against him concerning his controversial “scorpion on shivling” remark about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta presided over the case, refusing to find grounds for terminating the legal process initiated back in 2018.
This case dates back to a complaint filed by BJP leader Rajiv Babbar, who was aggrieved by Tharoor’s metaphorical statement made in October 2018 during a literary festival. Tharoor had relayed a remark from an unnamed RSS leader who allegedly compared Prime Minister Modi to “a scorpion sitting on a Shivling,” describing it as “an extraordinarily striking metaphor.” Babbar, asserting his devotion to Lord Shiva, claimed that Tharoor’s comments had deeply hurt the sentiments of numerous devotees across India and abroad.
In the detailed proceedings, Justice Mendiratta vacated a previous interim order that had stayed the criminal proceedings against Tharoor since October 16, 2020. The court has now instructed all parties involved to prepare for the next phase of the trial, which is set to resume on September 10 at the trial court level.
Tharoor, who was initially summoned by the trial court on April 27, 2019, and subsequently granted bail in June 2019, sought to dismiss the criminal defamation complaint lodged on November 2, 2018. However, the high court’s recent ruling pushes the case forward, requiring Tharoor to continue facing the charges under sections 499 (defamation) and 500 (punishment for defamation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
