NEW DELHI: A Delhi court today sought certain financial records of former union minister Kapil Sibal's son, Amit, who has filed a criminal defamation complaint against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and others.
Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma passed the direction while allowing an application filed by Bhushan seeking "ledger book, account book and bill book of Amit Sibal for the year 2006 to 2011". Bhushan claimed that the documents were required to check the correctness of the statement of the complainant Amit Sibal recorded before the court in the case.
The court said "the contention of the accused seems to have force as correctness of the statement of the complainant (Amit Sibal) which he deposed before the court is to be verified and same can be verified by confrontation of documents as mentioned in the application".
"In the considered view of this court, the documents so required would make it clear whether complainant appeared for the firm and got paid for his legal services after his father became Minister of Telecommunication and IT," the court said and posted the matter for further hearing on March 25.
Amit Sibal, however, had opposed the application, moved through advocate V K Ohri, saying that it was vague. In his complaint, Sibal had claimed that the accused had defamed him by their statements against him at a press conference in May 2013 claiming that he had acted in a "dishonest" and "unethical" manner in helping a major telecom company to illegally avoid the tax liability by using his father's position as Minister of Telecommunication and IT at that time.
Amit had denied the charges and also claimed that he was not the lawyer of the telecom firm. The court had on July 24, 2014, summoned Kejriwal, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, Bhushan and former AAP leader Sazia Ilmi and on September 20, 2014, it had put them on trial for charge under section 500 (defamation) of the IPC.
The accused had pleaded not guilty to the offence and claimed trial.