Delhi Police arrest Medha Patkar in decades-old defamation case

New Delhi: Social activist Medha Patkar was arrested by the Delhi Police on Friday morning after a Delhi court issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against her in a long-standing defamation case lodged by Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena, reported IANS.

According to officials, Patkar was arrested for failing to comply with a court directive and is expected to be produced before the court later in the day.

The Saket court had issued the NBW on Wednesday, observing that Patkar had wilfully ignored the sentencing order in the 2001 case, which required her to furnish probation bonds and deposit a compensation amount of Rs 1 lakh. The court took a stern view of her repeated absence from proceedings and her non-compliance.

Additional Sessions Judge Vishal Singh remarked: “The intention of convicting Medha Patkar is apparent that she is deliberately violating the Court order; she is avoiding appearing before the Court and also avoiding accepting the terms of the sentence passed against her.”

The court noted that despite being granted probation on April 8, Patkar had neither appeared before it nor fulfilled the conditions attached to the sentence. “The Court is left with no option but to enforce the production of convict Medha Patkar through a coercive order. Issue NBW (non-bailable warrant) against convict Medha Patkar, through the office of the Commissioner of Police, Delhi Police, for the next date,” the order stated.

Judge Singh further warned that if Patkar fails to adhere to the court’s directives by the next scheduled date, the lenient sentence granted earlier would be reconsidered. The court dismissed Patkar’s request for an adjournment, labelling it “frivolous and mischievous” and said it was “only calculated to hoodwink it”.

On April 8, the court had placed Patkar on probation for a year on the condition that she pay Rs 1 lakh as compensation to Saxena. This ruling came after an appellate court altered an earlier verdict, which sentenced her to five months of simple imprisonment and directed her to pay Rs 10 lakh in damages for harming Saxena’s reputation.

The origins of the case trace back to 2001 when Saxena, then the head of the Ahmedabad-based NGO National Council for Civil Liberties, filed two defamation complaints against Patkar. One was over remarks made during a television appearance, and the other concerned a press release.

These cases stemmed from an earlier legal dispute in 2000, in which Patkar had accused Saxena of releasing defamatory advertisements against her and the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) movement she led.

Saxena was represented in court by advocates Gajinder Kumar, Kiran Jai, Chandra Shekhar, Drishti, and Somya Arya.