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Shashi Tharoor, Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, has filed a criminal defamation case at a Thiruvananthapuram court , against Union Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad after he had made some defamatory remarks against him.
Prasad’s made the remarks after Tharoor ( in his latest book The Paradoxical Prime Minister) quoted an unnamed RSS source as saying that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was like a “scorpion sitting on a Shivling who cannot be removed by hand or hit with a chappal (slipper)”. Prasad had hit out at Tharoor before media and also tweeted, “Tharoor who is accused in a murder case has attempted to disrespect Lord Shiva”.
The defamation suit comes months after Tharoor had sent a legal notice to Prasad seeking an “unconditional apology” for his remarks in connection with Sunanda Pushkar’s death.
My legal notice to @rsprasad about his false, malicious & defamatory statements against me, which he has still not retracted. When India’s Law Minister falsely invents a murder case against a political opponent, what hope for justice & democracy? https://t.co/yB3CDWvcrG
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 31, 2018
Accusing Prasad of intentionally harming and destroying his reputation, Tharoor, Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, asked the Law Minister to tender an unconditional and written apology within 48 hours of the receipt of the notice. He also asked him to delete the clip of his press conference where he made the remarks against him along with the “false, untrue and highly defamatory statements on Twitter”.
Prasad, however, refused to apologise saying “there arises no question of any apology or deleting of the tweet”.
