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Synopsis

The Madras High Court recently dismissed a criminal revision petition filed by a member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for revival of a defamation case against Congress leader Nirmal Khatri and ABP news channel. 

The bench of Justice N Anand Venkatesh noted that the case pertained to a social media post from 2015. While holding that the decision of the lower court in dismissing the complaint of the petitioner did not suffer from apparent illegality or infirmity, court said, "That apart, to again revive the complaint at this stage will be like whipping a dead horse".

The instant petition had been filed by challenging the order passed by Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Allikulam, Chennai on December 22, 2016 on complaint of one H.Kalyan Singh- the present petitioner. 

The petitioner had then filed a private complaint against the accused persons— former Congress MP Dr. Nirmal Khatri and ABP News for offence under Section 499 of IPC punishable under Section 500 of IPC.

The allegation of the petitioner was that Dr. Khatri had shared a picture on his Facebook Page on December 5, 2015 which was also tweeted by him which contained a message as if an RSS worker had committed a heinous crime and while in his RSS uniform, he was being beaten by the police. 

The petitioner claimed that Dr. Khatri had copied the photograph from ABP News channel which had published the same in their news. 

Therefore, claiming himself as a member of RSS and stating that the defamatory comment/statement by Dr. Khatri had seriously affected the reputation of RSS and its workers, the petitioner had filed the complaint for defamation. 

However, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, considering the entire complaint along with the materials relied upon by the petitioner, had come to the conclusion that there was nothing available to show that the defamatory content was sent from Dr. Khatri's Twitter account. 

The CMM, therefore, had held that there were no sufficient grounds to proceed against the accused persons and accordingly, dismissed the complaint under Section 203 of CrPC.

Case Title: H.Kalyan Singh v. Dr.Nirmal Khatri and Others