Latest News | HC Stays Defamation Case Against Union Minister Murugan

Chennai, Apr 29 (PTI) The Madras High Court on Friday stayed further proceedings in a defamation case filed by the DMK against former BJP Tamil Nadu unit president L Murugan, presently the Union Minister for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, pending before the Special Court for MLAs and MPs here.

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Justice A D Jagadeesh Chandira granted the injunction while passing interim orders on a criminal original petition from Murugan today.

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According to the complaint from R S Bharathi, DMK MP and a trustee of Murasoli Trust, Murugan, while functioning as the president of the BJP state unit, had made a disparaging statement against the Trust in 2020. He had allegedly raised a question with regard to the parent title document over the land on which the Murasoli newspaper office was situated.

In his petition, Murugan submitted that from the statement it can be seen that there is no ingredients of defamation. Similar statements were made by many other political leaders, but the complainant for oblique motive, has chosen to frame only him alleging defamation. The statement is a mere question of title of a land and property and hence the motive was only to seek an appropriate answer and hence cannot be considered to be defamatory. The complainant instead of answering his question with revenue records, title records, source of consideration records and his declaration regarding the connection to him in this land in question, has chosen to give a criminal color attaching defamation laws, Murugan said.

His counsel and BJP legal wing president R C Paul Kanakaraj contended that none of the witnesses arrayed, including the complainant, can be termed to be aggrieved party.

Murugan had called for the records of a title with regard to a property in dispute, only for the interest of public good. Hence, there is no particular identifiable group or family within the party that can claim to have been affected by the remarks and question raised by Muruigan, Kanakaraj added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)