Kerala court slaps case on R S Prasad for libel against Shashi Tharoor

The chief judicial magistrate’s (CJM) court in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday filed a case against Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on a complaint filed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor who is also the MP from Thiruvananthapuram.

Tharoor had earlier sent a legal notice to Prasad seeking an unconditional apology for calling him a “murder accused.” But Prasad had rejected it and asked Tharoor to first apologize for calling Prime Minister Modi “a scorpion sitting on a Shiv Linga.” Later, Tharoor had filed a criminal defamation suit against him in the CJM court for allegedly making derogatory remarks in connection with his wife, Sunanda Pushkar’s death.

Prasad made the comment at a press conference in October 2018 in Delhi. In the conference he allegedly said, “Shashi Tharoor who is accused in a murder case has no right to make this comment against the PM.” Though the minister had not specified what murder case he was referring to, the reference was clear. Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar died mysteriously in a luxury hotel in New Delhi in 2014. The Delhi Police which is investigating the case had charged Tharoor with cruelty and abetment to suicide.

In his complaint, Tharoor had stated that the probe into the Sunanda Pushkar case had been completed and the Delhi Police had filed a final report before the Additional Metropolitan Magistrate court, in which he was charge sheeted under Sections 308 and 498 A of the Indian Penal Code.

“The final report does not state that the death of the deceased was a murder”, Tharoor had said. The Congress MP who appeared in the court on being summoned, was granted bail.