Supreme Court upholds Kannada journalist's conviction in criminal defamation case

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed an appeal filed by a journalist challenging his conviction and sentence in a defamation case for writing offensive articles against a lawyer [DS Vishwanatha Shetty vs. TN Rathnaraj]..A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli said that the language used by the journalist in the articles was extremely offensive."You use this kind of language and claim you are a journalist," said Justice Surya Kant."See the language used in the articles," Justice Kohli weighed in.CJI Ramana opined that the sentence of 1 month imprisonment was in fact, light considering the language used by the appellant. "It is liberal that it is only one month," the CJI said.The complainant was a notary and advocate, on whose complaint, the appellant DS Vishwanatha Shetty, editor and publisher of a Kannada weekly, was convicted under Section 501 of the Indian Penal Code. The complaint had alleged that the accused had published several articles with baseless allegations against the complainant to harm his reputation.The trial court had convicted Shetty and sentenced him to 1 year imprisonment and fine of ₹6 lakh. On appeal, the Karnataka High Court had upheld the conviction after noting that the language used by the appellant in the articles was offensive. It had said that the accused cannot get away by merely pleading that reports were in good faith after he had used such offensive language. However, the High Court had reduced the sentence to imprisonment for one month and fine of ₹50,000.The convict had appealed against the same to the Supreme Court."We see no reason to interfere with the impugned order passed by the High Court of Karnataka at Bengaluru whereby the said Court while partly allowing the criminal revision petition of the petitioner, reduced the sentence and increased fine for the offence of defamation under Section 501 of the Indian Penal Code. The Special Leave Petition is, accordingly, dismissed," the Supreme Court ordered.It, therefore, directed the appellant to surrender before the concerned trial court within a period of two weeks fro to serve out the sentence..[Read Order]