‘Tactics to delay trial’: court bins Medha Patkar’s plea for new witness in defamation case against Delhi L-G

Delhi court dismisses NBA leader Medha Patkar's plea for additional witness in defamation case against L-G Saxena.

A Delhi court on Tuesday dismissed an application by Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar to examine an additional witness in a defamation case she filed against Delhi Lieutenant-Governor V.K Saxena.

Raghav Sharma, the Judicial Magistrate of Saket court, observed that Ms. Patkar’s application is not a necessity but a “deliberate attempt to delay the trial” in a case which was filed 24 years ago.

The court noted that Ms. Patkar had also filed an application to summon additional witnesses in the past but failed to mention the name of the present witness at that time.

Ms. Patkar failed to explain under what circumstances she became aware of this witness, said the Judicial Magistrate

“If this witness was truly material to her case, she would have either included them in the original list of witnesses or, at the very least, mentioned them in the earlier application for additional witness. The fact that this witness has surfaced only now, after all of the complainant’s witnesses have been examined, raises serious doubts about the genuineness of this request,” the court said.

Ms. Patkar and Mr. Saxena, who then headed an Ahmedabad-based NGO named Council for Civil Liberties, have been locked in a legal tussle since 2000, when she filed the present suit against him for publishing advertisements against her and the NBA.

The Delhi L-G, too, filed two cases against Ms. Patkar in 2001 for allegedly making derogatory remarks against him on a TV channel and for issuing a defamatory press statement. A Delhi court sentenced Ms. Patkar to five months’ simple imprisonment in one of these cases on July 1, 2024.