'You added spice...': Supreme Court rejects Kangana Ranaut's plea for quashing defamation complaint over tweet on farmers’ protest

Kangana Ranaut

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea filed by actress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Kangana Ranaut to quash a criminal defamation complaint filed against her over remarks during the 2020-21 farmers' protest.

A bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta was hearing Ranaut’s challenge to the Punjab and Haryana High Court order that had earlier denied quashing the complaint against her.

Soon after the matter was taken up for hearing, Justice Mehta expressed reservations about the comments of the petitioner.

"What about your comments? It was not a simple re-tweet. You have added your own comments. You have added spice," Justice Mehta observed, according to a report by Live Law.

The report further stated the counsel submitted that the petitioner has given a clarification for her comments. To this, Justice Mehta replied that clarification can be given before the trial court. "The situation is such that I can't travel in Punjab," the counsel said.

The bench said Ranaut can seek an exemption from personal appearance.

After the bench showed its disinclination in entertaining the plea, Ranaut's counsel reportedly withdrew it.

The actor-turned-politician challenged the defamation complaint which stemmed from her retweet comprising her own comment about a woman protestor during the 2020-21 farmer protests against the now repealed farm laws.

Complainant Mahinder Kaur (73), who hails from Bahadurgarh Jandian village in Punjab's Bathinda district in 2021, had filed the complaint in Bathinda in January 2021.

Her complaint in a Bathinda court claimed the actor made "false imputations and remarks" against her in a retweet by saying she was the same "dadi" who was part of the Shaheen Bagh protest.

"Ha ha ha she is the same dadi who featured in Time magazine for being the most powerful Indian…And she is available in 100 rupees. Pakistani jurno’s have hijacked international PR for India in an embarrassing way. We need our own people to speak for us internationally," Ranaut had said in a post which now stands deleted.

Kangana's counsel had argued in the Punjab and Haryana High Court that the summoning order of the Bathinda court was not sustainable being violative of the criminal procedure code.

(With inputs from PTI)