- At the best of times, various Indian courts are bombarded with infructuous cases, rendering the already overburdened legal machinery with more. The millions of undertrials languishing in several jails across the country is a stark reminder of the creaking judicial delivery system perpetually failing to raise to the occasion for speedy disposal of cases. The Supreme Court has time and again emphasized the relevance and importance of disposing of cases in a time-bound manner but the humongous backlog prevents the courts from concluding on time. Add to this conundrum the increase in filing mostly irrelevant and infructuous cases like PILs, criminal defamation, and some such sundry issues only adds to the ever-increasing backlog.
PC: GeeksforGeeks
- Of course, the SC has been unequivocally exhorting various courts to uphold the virtues of granting bail rather than having undertrials in jails. Not granting bail despite SC’s exhortations impedes the already mounting cases around the country. Thankfully, SC’s diktats appear to have had a telling effect on the lower judiciary who are opening up to the idea of granting bail based on the merit of the cases. Nonetheless, criminal defamation cases are on the rise and honest introspection would reveal that it injures free speech in no uncertain terms. As a Delhi court recently noticed that criminal defamation law injures free speech, the SC should review the law in the right earnest. Mid you, politics in today’s India is arguably more heated than anywhere else in the world.
PC: IIMT Group Of Colleges
- And the lead actors sometimes profess to be thin-skinned where dubiously parochial considerations often take precedence. They complain of criminal defamation with dainty regularity. In dismissing one such complaint, filed by BJP’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar against Congress’s Shashi Tharoor, a Delhi court has underlined the larger stakes in this political pastime. If every speech is viewed as defamation, then freedom of speech and expression would be reduced to nought. Mind you, this is not harming the reputation of any person. Rather, it’s about proportionality. About the fitness of civil, rather than criminal, remedy in such cases. Notably, courts are inconsistent while hearing defamation cases.
PC: Deccan Herald
- Recollect how in 2023, the most high-profile such case saw a Surat court convict Rahul Gandhi for a remark made four years earlier, plus give him the maximum sentence of two years imprisonment, which set off his disqualification from Lok Sabha. The SC stayed the conviction within weeks, and Rahul returned to Parliament. He’s perhaps unfazed. But when a common citizen stands similarly accused, after she’s raised a sexual harassment grievance or he’s made a sharply anti-govt cartoon, the effect is much more suffocating. Conviction or not, there’s punishment in the process. Thus, criminal defamation has a chilling effect on freedom of expression by its very existence. The SC should consider righting this wrong forthwith.
