Court reserves order for March 9 on Arun Jaitley's defamation plea

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Tuesday reserved its order for March 9 on a criminal complaint filed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and five other AAP leaders for allegedly defaming him in the DDCA controversy.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Dass, who had earlier reaserved the order for pronouncement today, fixed it for the next date on the complaint in which Jaitley has alleged that Kejriwal and other AAP leaders had made defamatory statements that he and his family had made pecuniary gains by associating with M/s 21st Century Media Pvt Ltd, a sports management firm.

The court had on February 15 reserved its verdict after hearing the arguments on the complaint, perusing the annexures filed with it and the statements of complainant witnesses recorded in the matter.

The court had earlier recorded statements of Jaitley and other complainant witnesses in the case.

On January 5, Jaitley had appeared in the court and said that Kejriwal and five AAP leaders had made "false and defamatory" statements. He had rejected the charge that he had syphoned off money from DDCA for his own benefit.

During recording of his statement, Jaitley had claimed that Kejriwal and AAP leaders Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh, Raghav Chadha and Deepak Bajpai, had given statements even after the complaint was filed against them which had damaged his reputation.

The Finance Minister had said that their statements against him and his family members lowered his dignity in the eyes of the public at large. He had also referred to the Twitter and Facebook posts of these six leaders.

Jaitley had said Kejriwal's statement that he received money when the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium was constructed during his tenure as the DDCA Chief, was false as Board of Directors had constituted a committee to supervise the work and he was not a member of this supervisory committee.

Jaitley had on December 21, 2015 filed the criminal defamation case against them and sought their prosecution for offences that entail a punishment of upto two years in jail.