Delhi HC notice to L-G Saxena on Patkar’s plea for new witness

The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued a notice to Lieutenant-Governor VK Saxena on a plea by activist Medha Patkar seeking to examine a new witness in her 2000 defamation case against him.

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The Narmada Bachao Andolan leader filed the case against Saxena for allegedly publishing a defamatory advertisement when he headed an NGO in Gujarat.

Justice Shalinder Kaur sought Saxena’s response after Patkar moved against a trial court’s March 18 order dismissing the same plea. During the hearing, Patkar’s counsel urged the court to stay the proceedings before the trial court, which will be recording Saxena’s statement in the case.

The High Court, however, did not pass any order

and posted the hearing on May 20.

On March 18, the trial court dismissed Patkar’s plea to examine a new and additional witness and said the judicial process could not be “held hostage to such tactics”.

It said the present case was pending for 24 years and the complainant had already examined all the witnesses listed initially at the time of filing of the complaint.

The trial court also said if parties were permitted to introduce new witnesses arbitrarily at a belated stage, trials would become never-ending.

Patkar moved the application before the trial court on February 17, seeking to examine an additional witness, Nandita Narain, saying she was “relevant to the facts in the present matter”.

Saxena’s counsel had opposed the plea, saying it was filed after a gap of 24 years to delay the judicial proceedings and defeats the ends of justice.

Patkar and Saxena have been locked in a legal tussle since 2000 after she filed the present case against him for allegedly publishing advertisements against her and the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

Saxena, who then headed an Ahmedabad-based NGO Council for Civil Liberties, also filed two cases against Patkar in 2001 for allegedly making derogatory remarks against him on a TV channel and for issuing a defamatory press statement.

In one of the cases filed by Saxena, a Delhi court sentenced Patkar to five months’ simple imprisonment on July 1, 2024.