Delhi High Court allows Mahua Moitra’s defamation case against Sudhir Chaudhary to proceed

The Delhi High Court has quashed an order staying the criminal defamation proceedings initiated by Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra against Zee News editor-in-chief Sudhir Chaudhary. Justice Brijesh Sethi passed the order while allowing Moitra’s application, LiveLaw reports.

Earlier this month, Moitra had challenged a sessions court order staying the proceedings, saying the court “ought not to have intervened in the defamation proceedings when it was at the pre-summoning stage”.

Moitra filed the defamation case against Chaudhary in July. The case is related to a June 25 speech that Moitra gave in Parliament in which she listed seven signs of early fascism and how they applied to India. On July 4, Chaudhary alleged on his prime time show that Moitra’s speech was plagiarised from a Washington Monthly article published in January 2017. It was authored by Martin Longman, who had written it in the context of the American politics.

In her defamation complaint, Moitra said she had “clearly attributed” the source. Longman himself said Moitra was “being falsely accused of plagiarizing”.