The Delhi High Court observed that merely filing a complaint, even if it is later determined to be false, does not automatically constitute the offence of defamation. The court explained that to establish defamation it must be demonstrated that imputations were made with the intention of harming someone’s reputation or with knowledge or reason to believe that such imputations would harm reputation. Justice Neena Bansal Krishna delivered these observations while hearing a petition filed by a company’s director challenging the discharge of four former women employees on charges of defamation. The director alleged that after leaving their employment, the women had stolen confidential client data and documents, and in retaliation filed false complaints alleging sexual harassment. According to the director, these complaints resulted in the registration of four separate FIRs against him.
At first instance, the Metropolitan Magistrate had dismissed the director’s complaint, holding that there was no entrustment for criminal breach of trust and that there was no foundational material to support the offence of defamation. On revision, the Additional Sessions Judge upheld the Magistrate’s order, but directed that one of the women be summoned under Section 506 of the Indian Penal Code on the basis that the alleged threat to file false sexual harassment cases could disclose the offence of criminal intimidation. The director then approached the High Court, challenging the order upholding the dismissal of his complaint and seeking to set aside the proceedings against him.
In rejecting the director’s plea, the High Court held that whether the FIRs registered against the man were malicious or not was not the subject matter of the complaints filed by the women, and that his contentions regarding the FIRs were irrelevant to the issues before the High Court in the petition. The court reiterated that the mere act of filing complaints — even if they were ultimately found to be false — did not by itself amount to the offence of defamation under law when such complaints were made to authorities in the due course of law. It explained that the complaint makers could only be held liable for defamation if it could be shown that they had made allegations with the specific intention of harming reputation or with the knowledge that such allegations would likely do so. Based on this legal principle, the High Court found no infirmity in the orders of the lower courts upholding the dismissal of the director’s complaint and partly summoning one of the women for alleged criminal intimidation. The High Court concluded that there was no prima facie case for summoning the women for offences including wrongful prosecution, giving false information with intent to cause injury, criminal breach of trust, criminal conspiracy, and defamation, except for the singular count of criminal intimidation in respect of one woman, and accordingly dismissed the director’s petition.
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