The Right to Reputation & Defamation : The case of MJ Akbar vs Priya Ramani

A Delhi court has overruled a criminal defamation case filed by former Union Minister MJ Akbar against journalist Priya Ramani over her tweets blaming him of sexual harassment.

The Court took attention to the organized mistreatment at the workplace due to the lack of a mechanism to rectify the accusation of sexual harassment at the time of the confrontation of sexual harassment against the accused journalist had taken place.
It was preceding to the issuing of the Vishaka Guidelines (Vishaka & Ors vs State of Rajasthan) by the Supreme Court and legislation of The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.

The Right of Reputation cannot be preserved at the cost of the Right of Life and Dignity of Women.

As per the SC, the right to reputation is an essential part of Article 21 of the Constitution.
Additionally, the presence of Section 499 (Criminal Defamation) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 is not a restriction on the freedom of speech and expression because it ensures that the social interest is provided by holding a reputation as a shared value of the public at large.

No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to the procedure established by law.
This right is conferred on every person as the fundamental right to life and personal liberty.

In Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India 1978, the SC gave a new facet to Article 21 and held that the right to live is not purely a physical right but includes within its sphere the right to live with human dignity.
A woman has a right to put her grievance at any platform of her choice and even after decades

Defamation can both be a civil wrong and a criminal offence in India.
The difference between the two lies in the objects they seek to achieve.
A civil wrong tends to provide for a remedy of wrongs by awarding compensation and a criminal law seeks to punish a wrongdoer and send a message to others not to perpetrate such acts.

In Indian laws, criminal defamation has been explicitly defined as an offence under Section 499 of the IPC whereas Civil defamation is based on tort law (an area of law that does not depend on statutes to define wrongs but takes from an ever-increasing body of case laws to define what would establish a wrong).
Section 499 states defamation may possibly be through words, spoken or intended to be read, through signs, and also through visible representations.
These can both be published or spoken about a person with the intent of damaging the reputation of that person, or with the knowledge or reason to believe that the imputation will harm his reputation. Section 499 also cites exceptions.
These include “imputation of truth” which is required for the “public good” and thus has to be published, on the public conduct of government officials, the behaviour of any person affecting any public question and merits of the public performance.

Section 500 of IPC, which is on penalty for defamation, reads, “Whoever defames another shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”
Moreover, in a criminal case, defamation has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt but in a civil defamation suit, compensations can be awarded based on probabilities.

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