HC Dismisses Kangana Ranaut’s Plea in Defamation Case

• The Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed a plea by BJP MP Kangana Ranaut in a defamation case.
• The complaint was filed by Mahinder Kaur, a farmer who alleged that Ranaut defamed her in a 2021 tweet.
• The tweet allegedly misidentified Kaur and suggested she was a hired protester during the farmers’ agitation.

GG News Bureau
Chandigarh, 1st Aug: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has dismissed a plea by BJP MP Kangana Ranaut, who sought to quash a defamation complaint and a summoning order issued by a court in Bathinda. The ruling means the actor-turned-politician will now have to face trial in the defamation case.

The complaint was filed in 2021 by Mahinder Kaur, a 73-year-old farmer from Bahadurgarh Jandian village, in response to a tweet by Ranaut during the 2020-21 farmer protests. The tweet, which was later deleted, allegedly misidentified Kaur as Bilkis Bano of Shaheen Bagh fame and implied that such elderly women protestors could be hired for Rs 100.

Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya, in his order, stated that there were “specific allegations against the petitioner who is a celebrity, that false and defamatory imputations by her in the retweet have dented the respondent’s reputation and lowered her in her own estimation, as also in the eyes of others.” He further noted that the magistrate in Bathinda had “duly applied mind to the material on record” before issuing the summoning order.

Ranaut’s petition to the high court was filed under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, seeking to quash the complaint and the summoning order from February 22, 2022. The court, however, found no grounds to dismiss the case and concluded that the filing of the complaint by Kaur to vindicate her rights “cannot be termed mala fide.”