Thulla remarks: HC allows Kejriwal to withdraw plea challenging summon

The Delhi High Court today allowed Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to withdraw his plea seeking quashing of a trial court order summoning him in a criminal defamation complaint filed by a constable and await the lower court's decision on whether to frame charges against him for the alleged offence.

Justice R K Gauba gave Kejriwal the liberty to move the high court if the trial court framed charges of defamation against him.

During the brief hearing, the lawyer for the AAP convenor sought adjournment of the matter to await the trial court's decision on whether to frame charge of defamation against the chief minister.

However, the judge was of the view that there cannot be parallel proceedings in the high court and the plea against the trial court summons cannot be kept pending.

Subsequently, Kejriwal's lawyer told the judge that he had instructions to withdraw the matter and the court gave him liberty to approach the high court if charges were framed against the chief minister.

The court had earlier stayed the trial court order summoning Kejriwal in the defamation complaint filed by Delhi Police constable Anil Kumar Taneja, who had sought dismissal of the chief minister's petition seeking stay and quashing of the trial court order summoning him.

Opposing the chief minister's plea, the constable in his reply, filed through advocate L N Rao, had alleged that Kejriwal had "crossed all limits of decency" by using the insulting word 'thulla' for a policeman in an interview to a news channel.

Taneja, who had filed the criminal defamation complaint on July 23, 2015, claimed that by using the slang, Kejriwal had "intentionally insulted the Delhi Police force as a whole and caused unnecessary provocation to the police personnel in Delhi".

The high court in July last had asked Kejriwal to explain the meaning of the word 'thulla' he had allegedly used against policemen, while staying the trial court's order.

The word used by Kejriwal is a Hindi word and the high court wanted to know its meaning as it does not exist in the dictionary.

Earlier, Kejriwal's counsel had told the court that the word 'thulla' was not used against all policemen, but against those indulging in wrong practices.