NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has turned down an application filed by activist and Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar seeking to introduce and examine an additional witness in her defamation case against Delhi Lieutenant-Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena.
Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Raghav Sharma of Saket Court ruled that the plea was a strategic move to delay the proceedings rather than a necessity based on merit. The court emphasised that entertaining such requests without valid justification would establish a problematic precedent, potentially allowing litigants to prolong trials indefinitely.
The court observed that neither Patkar nor any of her witnesses had previously mentioned the new witness at any stage during the 24-year-long trial.
It reasoned that if the witness were indeed crucial, their role should have surfaced much earlier in the proceedings. Allowing fresh witnesses at this stage, the judge noted, would risk rendering trials endless, as parties could keep introducing new testimony whenever convenient.
“The judicial process cannot be held hostage to such tactics, especially in a case that has already been pending for over two decades,” the court stated.
The defamation suit dates back to 2000, when Saxena—then the head of the Ahmedabad-based NGO Council for Civil Liberties—published advertisements against Patkar and the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Patkar responded with a legal complaint, accusing him of defamation.
In a separate case, Saxena also sued Patkar for defaming him in a press statement dated November 25, 2000, titled “True Face of Patriot.” In the statement, Patkar allegedly labeled Saxena a coward rather than a patriot. That case resulted in Patkar being sentenced to five months of simple imprisonment last year, though she was later granted bail after her sentence was suspended.
Patkar argued that under Section 254(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), she was entitled to introduce any witness to support her case. However, the court noted that she had already examined all witnesses she initially named when filing the complaint.
Significantly, Patkar had previously filed an application under Section 254(2) CrPC to summon additional witnesses but had not mentioned the current witness in that request.
The court found this omission telling, and said that if this witness was truly material to her case, she would have either included them in the original list of witnesses or, at the very least, mentioned them in the earlier application for additional witness.
The court further observed that the sudden appearance of this witness, after all of Patkar’s other witnesses had been examined, raised doubts about the legitimacy of the request.
The judge pointed out that Patkar failed to explain when or how she became aware of this witness. If she had known about them earlier, there was no justification for the long delay in calling them to testify. Conversely, if she had only recently discovered their existence, she did not clarify how that discovery took place.
“This lack of explanation further weakens the credibility of her request,” the court remarked.
Ultimately, the court concluded that the application lacked merit and was likely a last-minute attempt to strengthen Patkar’s case artificially. Consequently, the plea was dismissed.
