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Mahua Moitra v. Sudhir Chaudhary: Delhi Court reserves order on summoning

Abha Gupta. Dated: 8/16/2019 5:54:17 PM

A Metropolitan Magistrate Court presided by Judge Preeti Parewa today reserved its order on whether to summon Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary in the criminal defamation case filed against him by Member of Parliament, Mahua Moitra.

The order is likely to be pronounced on September 7.

Mahua Moitra had filed the criminal defamation case against Chaudhary, who alleged that Moitra's June 25 speech in Parliament on the 'Seven Signs of Fascism', was plagiarized.

In her pre-summoning statement before the Court, Moitra had called the allegations of plagiarism false, baseless and malicious. Moitra asserted that in her speech, she "specifically mentioned and attributed" that the signs were taken from a longer list of signs available on a poster in the Holocaust Museum in the USA.

She deposed that Sudhir Chaudhary's allegation that she had copied the work of one Martin Longman was intended to severely and irreversibly damage and lower her credibility, reputation and impeccable integrity.

As part of Moitra's pre-summoning evidence, Member of Parliament Jayadeep Galla and advocate Varun Thomas appeared before the Court. They deposed that after watching Sudhir Chaudhary's broadcast on her speech being plagiarized, Moitra's reputation was lowered in their eyes.

Appearing for Moitra, Advocate Shadaan Farasat argued that the present case was the "clearest case of defamation". Apart from referring to the tweet by Martin Longman which categorically stated that Moitra's speech was not plagiarized, Farasat also placed on record the findings of several fact-checking websites to this effect.

After hearing Farasat, the Court reserved its order on whether or not to summon to Sudhir Chaudhary as an accused.

Chaudhary's application under Section 340 CrPC to initiate criminal action against Moitra for filing a false criminal defamation case and "playing fraud" with the Court is currently pending.

Meanwhile, Zee Media Corporation Ltd has also filed a criminal defamation case against Moitra for calling Zee News 'chor' (thief) and paid news.