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Court notice to magazine

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to Aroon Purie, Editor-in-Chief of India Today; Prabhu Chawla, Editor, and Mohini Bhullar, Publishing Editor, on a special leave petition challenging a Punjab and Haryana High Cou rt judgment quashing a defamation complaint against them for publishing a news item on “Gandhiji’s assassination” referring to the killer Nathuram Godse as an RSS worker.

The SLP was filed by Mukesh Garg, a practising lawyer and office-bearer of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Acting on his complaint, the trial court on October 13, 2004 issued summons to Mr. Aroon Purie and others for publishing the news item in the magazine’s August 2003 issue. However, the High Court, on appeal, quashed the complaint and the summons on the ground that the article could not be termed defamatory. For, “there is no imputation made to the RSS as an organisation which could give it a cause for complaint.”

The High Court held that referring to Godse as an RSS member could not be termed derogatory or defamatory. To say that a person belonging to a particular organisation was defamatory without ascertaining and determining its role would be an extreme fallacy. “In any case, this fact has been denied by inserting a clarification in the subsequent issue,” the court noted.

Senior counsel Arun Jaitley, appearing for Mr. Garg, submitted before a Bench consisting of Justices G. P. Mathur and D.K. Jain that the High Court was not justified in quashing the complaint on the ground that whether Nathuram was an RSS worker or not was a debatable issue. “The High Court has absolutely misunderstood the thrust of the article. The thrust of the article was that it alleged that the RSS killed Mahatma Gandhi through a human agent namely Nathuram Godse.

The writer also regretted that unfortunately such an idea was still surviving. This was nothing but a defamatory imputation against the RSS and its member and followers.”

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