Court summons RS Prasad over defamation suit filed by Tharoor

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The court of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday summoned Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in a defamation case filed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, the Lok Sabha MP from the city, Kerala’s capital.

The court took cognisance of the complaint filed by Tharoor in 2018 and asked Prasad to appear before it on May 2. Tharoor filed the defamation case against Prasad for allegedly making derogatory remarks against him in connection with his wife Sundanda Pushkar’s death in 2014.

Tharoor had earlier sent a legal notice to Prasad seeking an unconditional apology. In his reply to the notice, Prasad had defended his tweet, saying it was not defamatory.

He had rejected the demand and asked Tharoor to apologise first for calling PM Modi “a scorpion sitting on a Shiv Linga.”

Tharoor later sued Prasad in the CJM’s court. He said a video of the press conference where the remarks were made had been posted on social media “which was intended to harm his reputation and malign him...”

Prasad made the comment at a press conference in October 2018 in Delhi in which he allegedly said: “Shashi Tharoor, who is accused in a murder case, has no right to make this comment against the PM.”

Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar died mysteriously in a luxury hotel in Delhi. Delhi Police, which is investigating the case, charged Tharoor with cruelty and abetment to suicide. “The final report did not state that the death...was a murder,” Tharoor argued in his complaint.