Union Minister Arun Jaitley has said that Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s denial in the High Court that he had not instructed his former lawyer Ram Jethmalani to use defamatory words against him “bald and belated.”
Jaitley also said that the Aam Aadmi Party leader had neither substantiated his claim that he did not instruct his former lawyer to use such words, nor initiated any action against Jethmalani for using scandalous words without his permission.
In his response to Kejriwal’s denial, the BJP leader has said, “The records clearly establish that it was the defendant (Kejriwal) who had instructed his (then) senior advocate to use the said ex facie defamatory and slanderous words against the plaintiff (Jaitley) in order to defame him.”
“The frivolous defence submitted by the defendant in his written statement is false and dishonest,” Jaitley has said in his response.
The response of the senior BJP leader along with the evidence he was relying on was taken up Thursday before Joint Registrar Pankaj Gupta in the second Rs 10 crore defamation case filed by Jaitley against Kejriwal for the defamatory words used against him by the veteran lawyer, reported PTI.
The Joint Registrar listed the case before the regular court on 7 November after conclusion of admission and denial of the evidence submitted by Jaitley through his lawyer Manik Dogra.
Kejriwal’s lawyer, Anupam Srivastava, once again denied before the joint registrar the newspaper reports, electronic records of the news and interviews given by Jethmalani and the photocopy of the court records, all of which carried the defamatory words used by the senior lawyer while cross- examining Jaitley.
Jethmalani had called Jaitley a crook while cross- examining the finance minister in an earlier Rs 10 crore defamation case filed by him against the AAP convenor and five others of the party in 2015.
He had later written an explosive letter to Kejriwal reminding him that he alleged used ‘worse abuses than a mere crook’ for Jaitley. He had announced in July that he was quitting Kejriwal’s case.
The AAP leaders in December 2015 had levelled charges of corruption against Jaitley in connection with alleged financial irregularities in the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA).
Jaitley has denied all the allegations and also claimed that these had harmed his reputation.