New Delhi, September 24: A Supreme Court judge said on Monday that India should consider scrapping its criminal defamation law, warning that it is increasingly being misused by private individuals and political parties to settle scores.
“I think time has come to decriminalise this,” Justice M.M. Sundresh observed while hearing a petition by the Foundation for Independent Journalism, which runs The Wire news website, and a journalist seeking to quash summons in a criminal defamation case filed by a former Jawaharlal Nehru University professor.
The comment reopens debate over a 2016 ruling in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of criminal defamation, describing it as a “reasonable restriction” on free speech needed to protect reputation. Critics argue that treating defamation as a crime does not serve public interest.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the petitioners, cited the numerous cases filed against opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who has repeatedly moved the top court to stay summons issued by trial courts. The bench led by Justice Sundresh stayed proceedings in the lower court and tagged the petition with Gandhi’s pending cases.
In recent months, the court has stayed criminal defamation proceedings against Gandhi, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and others, cautioning against using the law to settle political disputes. In one case, the court told litigants to “fight your political battles outside the court.”
In a March ruling, the court underscored that alleged defamatory statements must be assessed from the perspective of a “reasonable, strong-minded” person, not those “who scent danger in every hostile point of view,” invoking the English legal standard of the “man on the top of a Clapham omnibus.”
Justice Sundresh’s latest remark signals growing judicial unease over the law, which remains a tool in India’s volatile political landscape.
