A Delhi court fixed March 7 for hearing arguments on whether to summon Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde in a defamation case filed against him for his remarks linking BJP and RSS to Hindu terror.
Metropolitan Magistrate Amitabh Rawat fixed the date for arguments after the court took on record all evidence submitted so far in the case.
Earlier, it had recorded the pre-summoning evidence of petitioner V P Kumar after it heard his counsel Monika Arora, who had alleged that the Home Minister had “wilfully” made the “derogatory” remarks to cause “ill will and hatred among communities”.
Kumar, in his petition, has alleged that Shinde’s remarks were aimed at “polarising minority votes” in the 2014 general elections.
“The impugned statement is not only defamatory in its natural meaning but also contains the imputation and insinuation that Hindu religion is involved in anti-national and terrorist activities,” the petition said, adding the minister “has used the word saffronBSE 4.90 % as synonyms of terrorism, which is totally absurd, wrong, mischievous and defamatory”.
According to the petition, Shinde, while addressing an AICC meeting at Jaipur last month, had said, “…We have got an investigation report that be it RSS or BJP, their training camps are promoting Hindu terrorism. We are keeping a strict vigil on all this”.
PTI
