The Supreme Court on Friday declined to grant any relief to an Editor of a Kannada weekly, awarded imprisonment for defamatory articles against a lawyer, saying one month jail was a liberal sentence against him.
A bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli dismissed a petition filed by D S Vishwanatha Shetty against the Karnataka High Court's order, which had only partly allowed his plea and reduced his sentence from one year to one month simple imprisonment.
"Let him suffer. What kind of journalism is this? We have to protect lawyers too. One month is very less," the bench told advocate Sanjay M Nuli, who, appearing for the petitioner, submitted that the High Court had not correctly appreciated facts of the case.
The plea also claimed the High Court's order infringed upon the 'freedom of press' and 'right to know', recognised as an intrinsic part of freedom of speech and expression as guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
The top court, however, noted the kind of language used by the petitioner and said one-month prison term was a lenient sentence.
The petitioner was proprietor, publisher, editor and printer 'Tunga Varthe', a Kannada weekly newspaper with wide publication in and around Kopa, Sringeri, and NR Pura Taluk, Kamataka.
He was sentenced to one year jail by a trial court under penal provision of defamation for publishing in 2008 a series of articles against advocate T N Rathnaraj and calling him a goon and MLA's spy for having prepared sale deeds pertaining to lands granted to SC/ST without the government's permission and by creating fake documents.
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