The Supreme Court on September 12 refused to entertain BJP MP and actress Kangana Ranaut’s plea for quashing the defamation case filed against her for her tweet related to the 2020-21 farmers’ protest in Delhi and asked her to instead fight the case in the trial court. To her lawyer’s argument that it was a simple retweet which was done by many others who were not facing any prosecution, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta replied that it was not simply a retweet but she added spice to it.
“It is not a simple retweet, as you say,” the bench said, explaining, “You had added something, you added spice to what was existing.” The court told her to instead prove her point in the trial court. Kangana thereafter withdrew her petition from the apex court.
The actress-MP moved the Supreme Court challenging an order of the Punjab and Haryana high court which had refused to quash the complaint against her. Complainant Mahinder Kaur had alleged that Kangana had made “false imputations and remarks” against her in a retweet by saying that she was the same “daadi” who was part of the Shaheen Bagh protest. Kaur was part of the protest and demonstrations against the three repealed farm laws. While dismissing Kangana’s plea, the court said, “There are specific allegations against the petitioner who is a celebrity, that false and defamatory imputations by her in the retweet have dented the respondent’s reputation and lowered her in her own estimation, as also in the eyes of others. Therefore, filing of the complaint to vindicate her rights cannot be termed mala fide.”