SC stays Defamation Proceedings against Lawyer over Facebook Post sharing book extract on Mamata Banerjee

On Friday, the Supreme Court paused a criminal defamation case initiated against Advocate Koustav Bagchi for posting excerpts from a book that allegedly referred to the personal life of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The Division Bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan issued notice in Bagchi’s plea challenging the proceedings and ordered maintenance of the status quo, temporarily halting the trial process. The interim protection signals the Court’s willingness to examine the limits of criminal defamation where content shared online originates from already published material.

The case arose after Bagchi, a practising advocate before the Calcutta High Court, shared portions of a 2015 book written by Dipak Kumar Ghosh on Facebook in May 2025. The passages reportedly contained remarks relating to the personal life of the Chief Minister and included a letter written by the author to her seeking information. Following the posts and accompanying comments, a defamation complaint was filed by the public prosecutor after obtaining statutory sanction. A trial court in Kolkata took cognisance of the offence under Section 356(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and issued summons. The High Court later declined to interfere with the order, prompting Bagchi to approach the Supreme Court through a special leave petition.

Before the Supreme Court, Senior Advocate Siddharth Dave, appearing for Bagchi, argued that the social media post merely reproduced extracts from a book that continues to remain publicly available. He further contended that prosecution concerning statements about a public office holder must satisfy the statutory threshold linked to official conduct. Considering the submissions, the Bench issued notice on the petition and directed that the existing position in the case be maintained. Recording the limited nature of the interim intervention, the Court ordered “status quo” in the proceedings, effectively halting further steps in the defamation case while the legality of the prosecution is examined.

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