On Thursday, the Bombay High Court dismissed the plea filed by Kangana Ranaut seeking to quash the criminal defamation proceedings initiated against her by a court based on lyricist Javed Akhtar's complaint. High court judge, Justice Revati Mohite Dere, who had on September 1 reserved her order on the plea, said the applicant's (Kangana's) petition 'stands dismissed'.
Kangana, through her counsel Rizwan Siddiquee, had challenged the defamation proceedings that were initiated by the Andheri Metropolitan Magistrate's court earlier this year, saying that the court had failed to apply its mind to the case. However, Javed's counsel Jay Bharadwaj, told the high court that the magistrate had directed for the police inquiry after going through the lyricist's complaint and excerpts of Ranaut's interview, in which she had made the alleged defamatory comments.
For the unversed, Javed had filed the criminal complaint against Kangana in November 2020 before the Andheri metropolitan magistrate for allegedly making defamatory and baseless comments against him in a television interview given to journalist Arnab Goswami.
In December 2020, the court directed the Juhu police to conduct an inquiry into Javed's complaint against Kangana and then initiated criminal proceedings against her, and issued summons to her in February this year.
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