24-year-old case: Delhi L-G Saxena gets relief in defamation plea filed by Medha Patkar (Ld)

New Delhi, March 18 (IANS) In a major relief to Lieutenant Governor V.K. Saxena, a Delhi court on Tuesday dismissed an application of social worker Medha Patkar to examine an additional witness in her defamation case against him, terming her application “a deliberate attempt to delay the trial”.

The 24-year-old litigation pertains to the time when LG Saxena was active in Gujarat and had not assumed charge in Delhi’s Raj Niwas. The case was moved to Delhi’s Saket Court in 2003 on the orders of the Supreme Court.

Saxena was heading an Ahmedabad-based NGO ‘Council for Civil Liberties’ in 2000 when Patkar filed a defamation case against him for publishing advertisements against her and the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Later, Saxena also filed a defamation case against Patkar for defaming him in a press note dated November 25, 2000, titled “True face of patriot.” She was sentenced to 5-month simple imprisonment last year. The sentence was later suspended and she was granted bail.

Dismissing Patkar’s plea on Tuesday, Metropolitan Magistrate Raghav Sharma of Saket Court pulled up the social worker, saying, “The fact that this witness has surfaced only now, after all the complainant’s (Patkar’s) witnesses have been examined raises serious doubt about the genuineness of this request.”

The court observed, “The present case has been pending for 24 years and the complainant (Patkar) has already examined all the witnesses initially listed at the time of filing the complaint. Notably, she had previously also filed an application… yet she did not present the new witness in that application.”

The court observed, “The complete absence of any reference to this witness, having not been mentioned even once during the 24 years trial, further suggests that it is an afterthought, possibly introduced to bolster the complainant’s case artificially.”

“She has not been able to explain as to how such recent discovery of this new witness occurred and this lack of explanation further weakens the credibility of her request,” said the court.

Observing that despite the present application being filed under a wrong provision of law, the court decided on the application totally on its merit.

Magistrate Sharma said, “Allowing such application without proper justification would set a dangerous precedent. If parties are permitted to introduce new witnesses arbitrarily at such a late stage, trials would become never-ending, as litigants could continuously bring to court new witnesses whenever it suits them, thereby prolonging proceedings indefinitely. The judicial process cannot be held hostage to such tactics, especially in a case that has already been pending for over two decades.”

It may be noted that LG Saxena’s counsel has been bringing to the notice of the court that from June 20, 2005, to February 1, 2023, the trial has been delayed more than 94 times on account of complainant Patkar’s absence or for moving adjournment application by her.

The counsel said after the issuance of the summons in 2005, she did not appear and sought more than 46 adjournments for recording her evidence and ignored and avoided the process of law and appeared before the trial court for the first time in 2012, seven years after the issuance of summons.

The petition pointed out that after 20 adjournments, Patkar appeared and concluded her examination in chief and for a long period she remained absent for her cross-examination and took 24 adjournments.

–IANS

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