Courts are being used for political persecution:Tharoor

After a criminal defamation case was filed against Congress leader Shashi Tharoor before a court in Delhi for his alleged remark comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a “scorpion”, Shashi Tharoor said in Kolkata on Saturday that nowadays courts are being used for political persecution.

“I was surprised to hear about the defamation suit. I hope that the judge will throw it out on the ground that this is the actual fact. But if not we will certainly have to defend it. Nowadays courts are being used as instruments of political persecution,” said Tharoor. He was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a party program.

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Tharoor defended his remark by arguing that the related statement was not his comment but he quoted the remark of an unknown RSS pracharak from a news article published in 2012.

“ It was not my comment. In describing a view of the relationship between the RSS and PM, I quoted an article published in 2012 in a magazine called the Caravan by a journalist called Vinod K Jose who said that an unknown RSS pracharak had told him the particular comment,” said Tharoor.

He also said that if at all there is any defamation in 2012 “it happened from RSS and not Sashi Tharoor.”

Asked whether the defamation charges against him were of any substance Tharoor said “ I think these are for the judge to decide. I find the entire charge frivolous to put it mildly because, throughout the exercise of writing anything about an individual, history or politics, of course, we will dig up.”