The Allahabad
High Court has dismissed international shooter Vartika Singh's plea challenging
an MP/MLA court order rejecting her defamation complaint against Union minister
Smriti Irani.
The Lucknow bench
of the high court said that while replying to journalists' questions, if the
petitioner was said to be associated with the Congress party or the
"Gandhi family", it was not her defamation.
The bench of Faiz
Alam Khan passed the verdict on March 5 which was uploaded on Monday.
Vartika Singh had
filed a case in the Sultanpur MP/MLA court, accusing Irani of defamation. The
case was dismissed by the special court on October 21, 2022.
The petitioner
had challenged the MP/MLA court's order in the high court.
Singh's
allegation was that when journalists asked Irani about the allegations made by
the petitioner against her personal secretary, Irani described the petitioner
as a "pawn" of the Congress and said she was having direct links with
the Gandhi family.
Quoting Irani's
entire conversation with journalists, the high court said that before giving
the statement in question, Irani talked about other matters and during this
time she did not even take the name of the petitioner.
The court said
that when asked about the petitioner, Irani had said the petitioner had links
with the Congress and also had a criminal history. The court found that
criminal cases were registered against the petitioner.
The bench said that
if the court looks at Irani's statements, she was criticising a political party
and she had no intention of defaming the petitioner.