After hearing for 2 years, a Court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on Tuesday asked the District Judge to transfer the criminal defamation complaint of Ex-Union Minister M J Akbar against journalist Priya Ramani to another Judge on the ground that the Court was designated to hear cases filed against lawmakers.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Vishal Pahuja, who had begun the final arguments in the case on Feb 7 this year, said the case in hand is not filed against MP or MLA & needs to be transferred to the "Competent Court of Jurisdiction".
Pahuja said his Court (Court of ACMM) was designated to try the cases filed against the lawmakers by a circular passed on Feb 23, 2018, & since this case wasn't filed against MP/MLA, he was marking the matter to Principal District & Sessions Judge to consider re-assigning the case to another Metropolitan Magistrate. Akbar had filed the criminal defamation complaint against Ramani in March 2018.
If transferred before another Court, the Judge would start hearing the final arguments again. As the present matter isn't filed against MP/MLA, hence, can't be tried by this Court & needs to be transferred to the Competent Court of Jurisdiction.
The ACMM said that let this matter be put up before the court of Principal District & Sessions Judge (Rouse Avenue District Courts) for Oct further appropriate orders.
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Picture Source : <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M._J._Akbar.jpg" title="via Wikimedia Commons">Mubasshir Mushtaq</a> / <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0">CC BY-SA</a>