The Supreme Court (SC) extended the stay granted on criminal defamation proceedings initiated against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor for his alleged ‘scorpion on Shivling’ remark targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018.
A bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and SVN Bhatti has granted four weeks' time to Delhi police and the complainant to file their reply to Tharoor's The bench directed, ‘The interim order (of stay on the defamation proceedings) to continue’. The complaint was filed against Tharoor in the trial court by Rajiv Babbar, a BJP leader, who claimed that his religious sentiments were hurt by the Congress leader's statement. At the same time, the counsel appearing for the Delhi Police argued that the main issue in the defamation case against Shashi Tharoor was determining whether the complainant, Rajiv Babbar, a BJP leader, could be considered an aggrieved party.
Earlier on September 10, the apex court had put an interim stay on proceedings in the criminal defamation case against Congress MP Tharoor. Tharoor had moved the top court against the high court's August 29 order, which refused to quash the defamation proceedings against him. The Congress MP had sought setting aside the trial court's April 27, 2019, order summoning him as an accused in the criminal defamation complaint.
In October 2018, Tharoor had claimed that an unnamed RSS leader had compared Modi to ‘a scorpion sitting on a Shivling’. The Congress leader had said it was an ‘extraordinarily striking metaphor’.