NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is set to hear a plea filed by actress-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut seeking the quashing of a defamation case against her over remarks on an elderly woman during the farmers’ protests against the three farm laws.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta will take up the matter after the Punjab and Haryana High Court, on August 2, dismissed Ranaut’s plea challenging the case.
The case stems from a tweet posted by Ranaut in 2020, in which she allegedly identified 73-year-old Mohinder Kaur, a resident of Bahadurgarh Jandian village in Punjab’s Bathinda district, as Bilkis Bano, popularly known as the “Shaheen Bagh dadi.”
Kaur filed a complaint in a Bathinda court in 2021, alleging that Ranaut’s remarks were false and defamatory, damaging her reputation.
While rejecting Ranaut’s plea, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had said there were “specific allegations against the petitioner, who is a celebrity, that the false and defamatory retweet had tarnished the respondent’s reputation.” The court further observed that filing a complaint to safeguard one’s rights could not be termed as malafide.
