Watch Nidhi Razdan: Criminal defamation has no place in a democracy

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00:00So it's been nearly six months since Rahul Gandhi was convicted of criminal defamation

00:08by a Surat court. And he would have thought that by now he would have got some relief.

00:12But instead, he's faced disqualification as a member of parliament and is now ready to

00:17knock on the doors of the Supreme Court. Because the Gujarat High Court recently not only refused

00:22to stay his conviction, but has also justified it saying that it was the right thing to do

00:27and gone into some details about morality and public life and, you know, political morality

00:32and moral turpitude and all the rest of it. Now, you could say yes, maybe there were people

00:37who were offended by what Rahul said, or maybe they didn't like what he said, and people

00:42are entitled to their opinions. But does it actually amount to a crime that should send

00:46somebody to jail potentially for the next couple of years? And that's the maximum possible

00:51punishment under the law? Is it something that he deserves to be disqualified from parliament

00:56for? Now, this entire debate has brought into focus India's criminal defamation laws,

01:02which for years many experts have argued are outdated, and have ultimately ended up being

01:07used to harass political opponents, journalists, activists, and anyone else you really just

01:13want to harass because the process is the punishment. India is one of the few democracies

01:17in the world that still retains criminal defamation laws everywhere else or in many other countries.

01:23It's now civil defamation that is on the statute books and not criminal defamation.

01:28And perhaps even though the Supreme Court actually upheld criminal defamation in a big

01:33judgment in 2016, perhaps the time has come for the high court or for the top judiciary

01:39to relook at its own judgment.

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