A court here on Thursday discharged Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and suspended BJP parliamentarian Kirti Azad in a criminal defamation complaint filed by the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) and its then Vice-President Chetan Chauhan.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal allowed Kejriwal's application for discharge, saying that there was not an iota of evidence that the DDCA or any official were personally defamed by his statement.
The court observed that the allegation is of defamation of DDCA as a body and therefore it is necessary that some person outside the DDCA should have come and say that the association has been defamed in his estimation.
"Interestingly, no such person has been examined. There is no witness apart from that class of person (DDCA) who says that the DDCA or any of its members have been defamed in his estimation.
"Therefore since a person cannot be defamed in his own estimation, the complainant therefore has no case to prosecute."
The court also noted that Chauhan, who says that he has been personally defamed, has no locus to prosecute this complaint any further because he has been relieved of his position as Vice President and the DDCA has now a new representative to prosecute the case.
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"Therefore, this discussion leads to the only inference that there no offence which can be attributed on the accused persons.
"Defamation is lowering down the dignity of a person in the estimation of others and not in the estimation of the person defamed," the court said.
Chauhan, in February 2016, filed a defamation case against Kejriwal and Azad and accused them of defaming the cricket body by passing "scandalous" remarks.
Referring to Kejriwal's interview to a news channel wherein he allegedly said that sexual favours were sought for selecting players, Chauhan alleged that "false" charges were levelled against the cricket association.
The plea claimed that Kejriwal's "false" statements were immediately endorsed and repeated by Azad.
The complainant said the accused (Kejriwal and Azad) had severely damaged the credibility and reputation of the complainant (DDCA) in the eyes of thousands of cricket lovers and citizens of India as well as internationally.
The court held that the interview with which the complainants are aggrieved does not talk of DDCA as whole but "it talks of some message from an individual, that too is not clear whether from DDCA or some outsider".
--IANS
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