New Delhi: A local court on Thursday issued a production warrant for AAP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh, who is currently in jail, in a defamation case related to his comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s educational degree. The additional chief metropolitan magistrate SJ Panchal ordered the production warrant after Singh’s lawyer said he had no instruction from his client, who is lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail in connection with a money laundering case involving an alleged excise scam in Delhi.


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Singh was arrested on October 5 and has been in judicial custody since then. The court directed the police to bring Singh from Tihar jail and present him before the court at 11 am on January 11, when the next hearing of the case will take place. Singh and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are accused of making “sarcastic” and “derogatory” remarks against Gujarat University (GU) over PM Modi’s degree.


The court started examining witnesses on Thursday, but Kejriwal’s lawyer sought exemption from appearance, which the court granted. Singh’s lawyer told the court that he had not received any instructions from Singh as he was behind bars, but GU’s lawyer Amit Nair objected to this and said it was a ploy by the AAP leader to delay the proceedings.


He requested the court to issue a production warrant for Singh, which the court agreed to and issued the warrant. The court had earlier summoned the two AAP leaders after finding that there was a prima facie case of defamation under section 500 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against them.


GU registrar Piyush Patel had filed the defamation case against Kejriwal and Singh for their statements after the Gujarat HC quashed the Chief Information Commissioner’s order on PM Modi’s degree.


The complainant alleged that the AAP leaders had defamed the university by targeting it over Modi’s degree in their press conferences and on their Twitter, now X, accounts. He claimed that the AAP leaders’ statements had damaged the reputation of the university, which had earned its name among the public.