A Delhi court Tuesday issued bailable warrants against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor after he failed to turn up for a court hearing in a defamation case. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Naveen Kumar Kashyap issued the bailable warrants in the sum of Rs 5,000 and notice for his surety on November 27, 2019. The court took notice of the fact that Tharoor and his counsel did not turn up for the court hearing and no exemption application was filed for his non-appearance. It added that the complainant in the case, Rajiv Babbar and his main counsel were also not present. The court noted that the exemption application filed on behalf of Babbar was "vague in nature". "It is stated in the application that he is in personal difficulty but what is such difficulty, is not explained at all in such application. Further, his main counsel is not present. Still taking the lenient view instead of dismissing the present complaint about the reasons of nonappearance of the complainant, he is burdened with a cost of Rs 500 to be deposited with DLSA, Central District Tis Hazari Court," the court said. Last year in November, Tharoor had courted controversy, while speaking at Bangalore Literature Festival, where he claimed that an unnamed RSS leader had compared the Prime Minister to "a Scorpion sitting on a Shivling." Taking note of the remark, Delhi BJP leader Rajeev Babbar had filed a criminal defamation complaint against the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, claiming that his religious sentiments were hurt by the statement. In his complaint, Babbar alleged that Tharoor with “mala fide intention made the statement which is not only abused to the Hindu deity but also defamatory”. The complaint, filed through advocate Neeraj, called the statement as “intolerable abuse” and “absolute vilification” of the faith of the people.
