CHENNAI: The Madras HC on Friday ordered suspension of the sentence of six months imprisonment to senior BJP leader H Raja in the cases relating to making inflammatory and derogatory statements against DMK MP Kanimozhi and Periyar EV Ramasamy until the appeals filed against the trial court verdict are decided.
Justice L Victoria Gowri, sitting in a vacation court, passed the orders on the petitions filed by the BJP leader challenging the trial court judgment. The judge directed the prosecution to file a reply to Raja’s appeal and adjourned the matter by four weeks.
Recently, the Additional Special Court for cases against MP/MLAs convicted him in two cases relating to making derogatory comments in 2018 against Kanimozhi and threatening to pull down the statues of Periyar in the same way the statues of Communist leader Lenin was razed in Tripura.
Apart from sentencing him to six months imprisonment each, the court also slapped a fine of Rs 3,000.
Raja alleged the FIR was registered after a delay of five months and there was no explanation for the delay, and the complaint itself suffered from “basic illegality” of being a joint complaint.
The FIRs do not mention the details as to who had first seen the objectionable material, where and how it was brought to the complainants’ knowledge and whether it was seen by all of them together or one of the complainants saw it first, the appeals said.
The appeal further argued that not the source of the objectionable material was, but only a screenshot of it, was submitted in the court and there was no evidence that the alleged objectionable material was published by Raja.