Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed by actor Kangana Ranaut seeking quashing of the criminal defamation proceedings initiated against her by a court in Mumbai based on lyricist Javed Akhtar’s complaint.
High court judge, Justice Revati Mohite Dere, who had on September 1 reserved her order on the plea, said the applicant’s (Kangana Ranaut’s) petition “stands dismissed”.
The single-judge bench of justice Dere who heard Ranaut’s petition had been informed by advocate Rizwan Siddiquee that the magistrate had not followed due procedure on receipt of the complaint and had assigned the investigation into the complaint to the Juhu police, which he should have done himself.
Siddiquee had also submitted that the magistrate had not applied his judicial mind while issuing the process or issuing a bailable warrant after Ranaut failed to appear in court.
He had argued that the complainant had not placed any evidence before the magistrate and the same was brought on record by a third party. Siddiquee had stated that as the procedure laid down under Section 202 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was not followed, the entire proceedings, orders and summons issued by the magistrate should be quashed.
In light of Section 202 of the CrPC, advocate Jay Bharadwaj for Akhtar had submitted that the magistrate had three options–to either conduct the investigation himself; or direct an investigation to be made by a police officer; or direct a third party to conduct investigation. The magistrate had chosen one of the legally available options and hence the petition was liable to be dismissed.
Akhtar had filed the defamation case against Ranaut in November for the remarks she made about him during a TV interview while speaking on actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death.
Akhtar had accused Ranaut of causing “irreparable damage” to his reputation. “Each and every allegation and imputation made in the said interview is false, defamatory, malicious, and has been made with reckless disregard to the truth,” he had said in his complaint.
In December, the Andheri metropolitan magistrate’s court had directed the police to investigate Akhtar’s complaint against Ranaut.
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