Murasoli panchami land row: Bharathi’s reply sought

Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan, before whom the plea moved by the PMK leader came up on Thursday, sought Bharathi’s reply and posted the plea for further hearing to October 5. The hearing was in sequel to the HC staying all further proceedings in a criminal defamation case filed by Murasoli Trust against Ramadoss and BJP State secretary R Srinivasan for alleging that the office of DMK mouthpiece Murasoli was situated on panchami land.

Bharathi had moved the defamation suit against both the leaders at the Metropolitan Magistrate Court at Egmore. The suit claimed that Ramadoss had raised the issue in a series of tweets on multiple occasions, while Srinivasan had filed a complaint with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, seeking the retrieval of the land, and even made a Facebook post on the issue.

However, Ramadoss moved the HC and obtained a stay on the suit proceedings claiming that his tweet was not defamatory. He had contended that while the DMK president had tweeted about a movie Asuran, based on the travails of the Scheduled Castes that “it was not just a movie but a lesson to be learnt”, he had replied “the trust should first learn a lesson from the movie and return the panchami land on which it was reportedly squatting for long.”

This, by no stretch of the imagination, would amount to defamation, Ramadoss contended while seeking to quash the criminal defamation suit against him. On the other hand, the DMK leader had contended that Ramadoss and Srinivasan have been seeking political mileage on the issue