Criminal Defamation Case-Priya Ramani case

Introduction

• This article discuss about the Priya Ramani case and how women are being unvoiced for fear of ridicule, shaming, or on grounds of sheer financial necessity.
• There have also been those who feel that anything short of rape or outraging a woman’s modesty is not actionable.
• A powerful man’s predatory past has caught up with him, when a not-so-powerful victim chose to come forward with her story and even at the risk of imprisonment, turned down suggestions of a compromise and persisted with telling her truth.

An allegation of Criminal defamation

• On October 8, 2018, Ms Ramani put out on Twitter “ I began this piece with my MJ Akbar story. Never named him because he didn’t ‘do’ anything. Lots of women have worse stories about this predator maybe they’ll share.”
• A media storm followed which forced Mr. Akbar to resign his position as a Minister on October 17. 2018.
• The next day, he filed a criminal complaint for defamation against Ms. Ramani for her article and her tweets.

Defamation and the defence

• The law of criminal defamation is premised on a person’s right to a reputation.

An allegation by Mr.Akbar

• Mr. Akbar alleged that Ms. Ramani’s allegations, “by their very tone and tenor, are ex facie (on the face of it) defamatory and had not only damaged the complainant’s goodwill and reputation in his social circles and on the political stage, which was established after years of toil and hard work but also had affected the personal reputation of complainant in the community, friends and colleagues, thereby caused him irreparable loss and tremendous distress.”

The exception to Section 499

• If imputation is true: Ms. Ramani premised her defence on the First Exception to Section 499 which postulates that “It is not defamation to impute anything which is true concerning any person, if it is for the public good that the imputation should be made or published.”
• If the imputation is made in good faith: She also relied upon the Ninth Exception which says that “It is not defamation to make an imputation on the character of another provided that the imputation be made in good faith for the protection of the interests of the person making it, or of any other person, or for the public good.”

For the public good, witnesses

• The Third Exception was also pressed into service saying: “It is not defamation to express in good faith any opinion whatever respecting the conduct of any person touching any public question, and respecting his character, so far as his character appears in that conduct ....”
• The journalist, Ghazala Wahab, who had also worked with Mr. Akbar at a later point in time, narrated her own horrifically detailed experience of harassment by him.
• The judgment has thus ruled that Ms. Ramani spoke the truth and that Mr. Akbar had a pre-existing tarnished reputation which had been exposed for the public good.

Other cases

• Many have wondered why the acquittal on a charge of defamation by a victim of sexual harassment is being celebrated when the alleged perpetrator has faced no criminal prosecution at all.
  • The answer is that this judgment shines like a good deed in a naughty world when contrasted against a series of cases where the legal process has failed to bring closure and justice to women complainants.
• In the Mathura rape case of 1978, the Supreme Court’s acquittal of the policeman, Tukaram, earned it a stinging rebuke from legal scholars that “consent involves submission, but the converse is not necessarily true”.
• A decade later, in 1988, IAS officer Rupan Deol Bajaj prosecuted Punjab’s super-policeman K.P.S. Gill, for outraging her modesty. Mr. Gill’s conviction was maintained right up to the Supreme Court but he was released on probation and suffered no imprisonment.
• Two years later, in 1990, S.P.S. Rathore, another senior policeman in the neighbouring State of Haryana, tried to force himself on a 14-year-old tennis player.
  • When the girl and her family complained to the authorities, a targeted pattern of vengeance and harassment followed which lead to her death by suicide.
  • Nevertheless, even after a prolonged uproar, in 2016, Mr. Rathore got away in the Supreme Court, with a six-month term of imprisonment already undergone, in view of his advanced age.
• The founder-editor of a magazine, Tarun Tejpal’s trial for alleged digital rape, in 2013, of his subordinate in a hotel lift, is still pending trial in a court in Goa.

Conclusion

• By rarely visiting retribution upon the perpetrators, the legal process has hitherto yielded little in terms of relief to the victim.
• Hopefully, a few men are now deterred from trading power and position to secure sexual favours.
• Mr. Akbar may yet file an appeal and the wheels of justice may yet be kept grinding, but Ms. Ramani today stands tall and vindicated.