Arvind Kejriwal in HC to quash defamation complaint by Vijender Gupta

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has moved the Delhi High Court for quashing of the defamation complaint against him by BJP leader Vijender Gupta and summons issued to him in the matter.

When the matter came up for hearing before Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri on Tuesday, the judge observed that there was a high court ruling which said  whether re-tweets would constitute an offence of defamation under the Indian Penal Code has to be determined during trial.

The court asked Kejriwal's lawyers to go through the judgement to ascertain whether it would be applicable in the instant case and listed it for hearing on August 23.

Gupta, in his complaint, had accused Kejriwal and Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia of "maligning" his image by allegedly accusing him on Twitter of being part of an alleged "conspiracy" to kill the AAP chief.

The AAP convenor, represented by senior advocate Vikas Pahwa and advocate R Arunadhri Iyer, has claimed that he had neither mentioned Gupta in his tweet nor made any allegations against him.

READ | 'Will Install CCTV Cameras In All Delhi Govt School, There's No Privacy Breach, Children Don't Go To School For Anything Private': Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal

His lawyers, however, admitted that the AAP chief had re-tweeted Sisodia's tweet but with his own comment in which also Gupta was not mentioned by name.

Kejriwal, in his plea filed through advocate Mohd Irsad, has contended that he has neither made any defamatory comment against Gupta nor mentioned his name and therefore, the offence was not made out against him. 

After Kejriwal was slapped in May this year during the general election campaign, he had alleged on Twitter that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wanted to get him killed by his own personal security officer (PSO) in the manner in which Indira Gandhi had been assassinated.

In response to his comments, Gupta had said that Kejriwal was slapped because he had relaxed his security cordon.

To this, Sisodia had tweeted that there was a conspiracy to kill Kejriwal and that Gupta was allegedly part of it. 

READ | 'Welcome Back Arvind Kejriwal Ji, Finally You're Back In Business': Twitterati Can't Keep Calm After Delhi CM Reviews Ayushmann Khurrana's 'Article 15', Here's What He Said