New Delhi, Sept 12 — The Supreme Court on Friday told actor and BJP MP Kangana Ranaut that her controversial retweet during the 2020–21 farmers’ protest could not be dismissed as a “simple retweet,” noting she had “added spice” with her own comments. The court allowed Ranaut to withdraw her petition seeking to quash a defamation complaint filed against her by an elderly Punjab woman protester.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, while showing disinclination to entertain her plea, said questions of interpretation could not be settled at the stage of quashing proceedings. “It is not a simple retweet as you say. You had added something, you added spice to what was existing,” Justice Mehta observed during the hearing.
Ranaut’s counsel argued that she merely retweeted an existing post. “She retweeted the same. The original tweet itself had a lot of retweets by other people,” the lawyer said. When pressed by the bench, Justice Mehta asked, “What do you say about your comments at page 35? What does that impute? It is a subject matter of trial.”
The counsel responded that Ranaut had issued a clarification and challenged the Bathinda court’s summons. But the bench maintained that such defences could only be presented before the trial court. “The clarification could be given in the trial court and not in the quashing proceedings,” Justice Mehta said.
When Ranaut’s lawyer mentioned that “today is a situation for me that in Punjab, I can’t travel,” the bench said she was free to seek exemption from appearance. Justice Nath then asked if the petitioner wanted to withdraw the plea. “I will withdraw,” the lawyer said, and the court allowed the withdrawal.
Ranaut had approached the apex court against the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s August 1 order, which refused to quash the Bathinda defamation complaint. The case stems from her retweet containing remarks about 73-year-old Mahinder Kaur, who participated in the farmers’ agitation against the now-repealed farm laws.
In her complaint filed in January 2021, Kaur alleged that Ranaut falsely claimed she was the same elderly woman who had joined the Shaheen Bagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The high court, while upholding the summons, said, “There are specific allegations against the petitioner who is a celebrity, that false and defamatory imputations by her in the retweet have dented the respondent’s reputation and lowered her in her own estimation, as also in the eyes of others. Therefore, filing of the complaint to vindicate her rights cannot be termed mala fide.”
Kaur stated she had been part of dharnas since the beginning of the farmers’ protests and had even traveled to Delhi despite her age. She maintained she had no connection to the Shaheen Bagh protester featured in Time magazine, with whom she was wrongly compared. Her petition said Ranaut’s remarks “hurt her pride, honour, and defamed her on social media.”
In earlier arguments, Ranaut’s counsel claimed the Bathinda court’s summoning order was flawed, violating criminal procedure. After recording preliminary evidence, the magistrate had sought a report from Twitter Communications India Pvt Ltd but issued summons before receiving it, they contended. The defence also insisted Ranaut had no intention to damage Kaur’s reputation.
