NEW DELHI: In a major setback to Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader and activist, Medha Patkar, a Delhi court on Monday in its order sentenced her to five months in jail in a defamation case filed against her by Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena in a more than two decade old case.
The court directed Patkar to pay Rs 10 lakh compensation to Saxena.
"It is evident that the accused (Patkar) harbored a clear intention to defame the complainant through her press note, given the deliberate and calculated nature of her statements," the Court said in its order.
Saxena had filed the defamation case against Patkar in 2001, when he was the former President of an Ahmedabad-based, NGO, National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL).
As per the case details, Saxena had in 2000 published an advertisement against Patkar's NBA, the movement that opposed the construction of dams over the Narmada River.
After getting to see the publication of the advertisement, Patkar had issued a press note against Saxena. The note stated that Saxena was “mortgaging the people of Gujarat and their resources before Bill Gates and Wolfensohn and he was an agent of the Government of Gujarat”.
This press note of Patkar led Saxena to file a defamation suit against her before a court in Ahmedabad in 2001. The case was, later, however, transferred to Delhi in 2003 on the orders of the Supreme Court.
Metropolitan Magistrate of Saket Court, Raghav Sharma, who convicted Patkar on May 24, however, said that the order will remain suspended for 30 days, to ensure that she filed an appeal against this order in an higher court.
The judge in its order noted that keeping in view the age and health of the convict (Patkar), he refrained from passing any excessive punishment of one year or two years against her in the defamation case.
The Court, further in its order elaborated that by explicitly stating that Saxena was "pained with hawala transactions", Patkar aimed to associate him with illegal and unethical financial dealings, which inflicted significant harm to his reputation and standing.
"Without providing any substantive evidence, this is a clear attempt to malign his financial integrity and create a public perception of wrongdoing, the Court opined" the court said.
Judge Sharma ruled that the terms used by Patkar against Saxena were not only inflammatory, but were also intended to provoke public outrage and diminish his esteem.