Defamation case against V K Saxena: Court junks Medha Patkar's plea for new witness

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Tuesday dismissed a plea of activist Medha Patkar to examine a new witness in her 2000 defamation case against Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena and said the judicial process couldn't be "held hostage to such tactics".

The Narmada Bachao Andolan leader filed the case against Saxena when he headed an NGO in Gujarat for allegedly publishing a defamatory advertisement.

Judicial magistrate Raghav Sharma noted that present case was pending for 24 years, and the complainant had already examined all the witnesses listed initially at the time of filing of the complaint.

"The judicial process cannot be held hostage to such tactics, especially in a case that has already been pending for over two decades," the judge said.

Patkar, he observed, previously filed a plea to summon additional witnesses, yet she did not mention the present witness in that application.

"If this witness was truly material to her case, she would have either included them in the original list of witnesses or, at the very least, mentioned them in the earlier application for additional witness. The fact that this witness has surfaced only now, after all of the complainant's witnesses have been examined, raises serious doubts about the genuineness of this request," the judge said.

The court said neither the complainant nor any of her witnesses referred to the witness sought to be summoned at any stage of the trial.

"If this witness was genuinely relevant, his/her name or role in the case would have been mentioned at some point during the last 24 years of proceedings. The complete absence of any reference to this witness further suggests that it is an afterthought, possibly introduced to bolster the complainant's case artificially," the judge said.

Patkar, said the court, further did not provide any explanation as to when, how, or under what circumstances she learnt about the witness.

If she was aware of the witness from the outset, she offered no justification for the prolonged delay in summoning them, the judge said.

"This lack of explanation further weakens the credibility of her request," the court added.

He said that allowing such applications without proper justification would set a dangerous precedent.

The order said if parties were permitted to introduce new witnesses arbitrarily at a belated stage, trials would become never-ending.

Patkar moved the application on February 17 seeking to examine an additional witness, Nandita Narain, saying she was "relevant to the facts in the present matter".

Saxena's counsel Gajinder Kumar opposed the plea, saying it was filed after a gap of 24 years to delay the judicial proceedings and defeating the ends of justice.

Patkar and Saxena have been locked in a legal tussle since 2000 after she filed the present suit against him for publishing advertisements against her and the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Saxena, who then headed an Ahmedabad-based NGO Council for Civil Liberties, also filed two cases against Patkar in 2001 for allegedly making derogatory remarks against him on a TV channel and for issuing a defamatory press statement.

In one of the cases filed by Saxena, a Delhi court on July 1 last year sentenced Patkar to five months' simple imprisonment.