Arun Jaitley defamation plea: Court reserves order for Feb 23

A Delhi on Monday reserved its order for February 23 on a criminal defamation complaint filed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders for allegedly defaming him in the DDCA controversy.

Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen reserved the order after hearing arguments on the complaint filed by Jaitley in which he has alleged that Kejriwal and other AAP leaders had made defamatory statements that he and his family members had madepecuniary gains by associating with M/s 21st Century Media Pvt Ltd, a sports management company.

Jaitley was also present in the court during the hearing. Advocate Manoj Taneja, one of the lawyers representing Jaitley, said the court heard the arguments on the complaint, perused the annexures filed with it and the statements of complainant witnesses recorded in the matter.

The court had earlier recorded statements of Jaitley and other complainant witnesses in the matter. On January 5, Jaitley had appeared in the court and said that Kejriwal and five AAP leaders had made "false and defamatory" statements. He had rejected the charge that he had syphoned out money from DDCA for his own benefit.

During recording of his statement, Jaitley had claimed that Kejriwal and AAP leaders Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpai, had given statements even after the complaint was filed against them which had damaged his reputation.

The Finance Minister had said that their statements against him and his family members lowered his dignity in the eyes of the public at large. He had also referred to the Twitter and Facebook posts of these six leaders.

Jaitley had said Kejriwal's statement that he received money when the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium was constructed during his tenure as the DDCA Chief, was false as the Board of Directors had constituted a committee to supervise the work and he was not a member of this supervisory committee.

Jaitley had on December 21, 2015 filed the criminal defamation case against them for allegedly defaming him and sought their prosecution for offences that entail a punishment of up to two years in jail.