The Bombay High Court on Friday directed a Magistrate court in Mumbai to hear former Member of Parliament (MP) Rahul Shewale’s defamation complaint against Shiv Sena UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray and former MP Sanjay Raut after September 24 and not to proceed in the trial.
The bench of Justice SM Modak was hearing a plea filed by Shewale through advocate Chitra Salunke seeking the quashing of an order passed by the Magistrate court on July 19 rejecting an application filed by the Eknath Shinde faction leader seeking the name of the Saamna newspaper’s reporter who had published an allegedly defamatory article.
This application was rejected by the magistrate court because, according to it, this revealing of the reporters’ names “amounts to self-incrimination of the accused themselves.”
The entire issue revolves around a news report published in Saamna newspaper on December 29, 2022, which stated that Shewale allegedly had business interests in Pakistan. Shewale claimed that the report was baseless and was an attempt to damage his reputation and political career by levelling false accusations against him to malign his public image. He described the articles as a “concocted story,” “devoid of any merits,” and a classic example of “vendetta journalism.”
The article was published in both the Hindi and Marathi editions of the newspaper but without any byline of any reporter. When the court had issued a summons to the reporters through the local police station, then a Saamna office bearer, Datta Hargude had received it. So Salunkhe’s plea before the Magistrate court also sought that summon be issued to Hargude to state the name of the reporters who wrote the article.
However, this was rejected by the magistrate court, stating that Hargude was not mentioned in the witness list given by Shewale at the beginning of the trial.
The High Court said that it would consider this issue as well and, thus granting interim relief to Shewale, the high court stayed the trial until the next date, which is September 24.
– Ends
Published On:
Aug 23, 2025
