Criminal Defamation Case-Priya Ramani case

20 February, 2021
10 Min Read

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.

Story of Priya Ramani’s harassment

The story begins in December 1993 when the very term sexual harassment was rather unknown. Ms Ramani, then 23, was being interviewed for a job by the then 43-year-old celebrity editor, at 7 in the evening, in a five-star hotel, the Oberoi, in Mumbai.
Rather than having a meeting in the lobby that she was expecting, she was surprised to be called up to the man’s room. She says, “It was more date, less interview. You offered me a drink from the mini-bar (I refused, you drank vodka), we sat at a small table for two that overlooked the Queen’s Necklace (how romantic!) and you sang me old Hindi songs after inquiring about my musical preferences.
You thought you were irresistible. The bed, a scary interview accompaniment, was already turned down for the night. Come sit here, you said at one point, gesturing to a tiny space near you. I’m fine, I replied with a strained smile. I escaped that night, you hired me, I worked for you for many months even though I swore I would never be in a room alone with you again.”

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.

What is criminal defamation?

Making or publishing “any imputation concerning any person, intending to harm, or knowing or having reason to believe that such imputation will harm, the reputation of such person”, is criminal defamation.

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.”

What are Section 499 and Section 500 of IPC?

Defamation is the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual person, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation.
In India, defamation can both be a civil wrong and a criminal offence.

The difference between the two lies in the objects they seek to achieve.

A civil wrong tends to provide for redressal of wrongs by awarding compensation and a criminal law seeks to punish a wrongdoer and send a message to others not to commit such acts.

Section 499:

Criminal defamation has been specifically defined as an offence under section 499 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Civil defamation is based on tort law (an area of law which does not rely on statutes to define wrongs but takes from an ever-increasing body of case laws to define what would constitute a wrong).
Section 499 states defamation could be through words, spoken or intended to be read, through signs, and also through visible representations.
Section 499 also cites exceptions. These include “imputation of truth” which is required for the “public good” and thus has to be published, on the public conduct of government officials, the conduct of any person touching any public question and the merits of the public performance.

Section 500:

Section 500 of IPC, which is on punishment for defamation, reads, “Whoever defames another shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”

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.

Source: TH