The Patiala House Court today quashed the revision petition filed by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal against summoning order issued against him concerning a defamation case filed by BJP supporter Vikas Pandey. Following this development, Kejriwal will now have to face trial for spreading a slanderous video uploaded by pro-AAP blogger Dhruv Rathee.
Revision Petition filed by @ArvindKejriwal against the summoning order is dismissed by the Hon’ble Court! Mr. Kejriwal has to face the trial now coz he spread fake video against me made by @dhruv_rathee. Lag gya Jhadu ?Revision par! So proud of @raghav355 & @ThisIsTheMukesh!!! https://t.co/oPnPiIzHUD
— Vikas Pandey (@MODIfiedVikas) October 30, 2019
The Delhi CM had appealed against the summon issued by a magistrate at a session court in Patiala house court. In the judgement, Special Judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar said, “the impugned order has dealt with all the relevant aspects of the issues involved at the stage of summoning. At this stage, the court has only to see if there are sufficient grounds to proceed further or not and if the impugned order is weighed on this scale, then I find no illegality, impropriety or irregularity in the order.”
The defamation case pertains to a slanderous video uploaded by pro-AAP blogger Dhruv Rathee, in which he had contended that Vikas Pandey was an active member of the BJP IT cell and he offered to pay a bribe of Rs 50 lakhs to Mahavir Prasad, supposedly an ex BJP IT cell member, to defame him. Though in the video Rathee claims to have advised Mahavir to record his conversations, in the follow-up video, he regrets that he has no recording of “Rs 50 lakh bribe offer”, purportedly made by Vikas. With no tangible evidence to prove his allegations, the YouTube blogger still went ahead to level atrocious accusations against Pandey.
In addition to this, Rathee also contended that Abhishek Mishra was used by Vikas Pandey in order to offer a bribe to Mahavir Prasad. However, there was nothing in the call recording to allude that Pandey asked Mishra to bribe Prasad. In fact, Rathee himself concedes in the video that the evidence in his possession is insufficient to back his allegations.
Kejriwal had shared this video by Rathee, thus lending credence to his lies and misinformation and adding to the vilification endured by Pandey. Vikas, a software engineer by profession, and a strong Modi supporter had then filed a defamation suit against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and YouTube blogger Dhruv Rathee.
