Hon'ble Supreme Court of India (Bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice P.C. Pant) delivered an important judgment on 13th May 2016 in the case of Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India in Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 184/2014 whereby the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutional validity of Sections 499 to 502 of Indian Penal Code relating to Criminal Defamation. The Court held that the right to Life under Article 21 includes right to reputation. The Court dismissed the Petitions filed by Subramanian Swamy, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal challenging the law relating to Criminal Defamation in India.
These petitions were filed in the wake of increasing instances of people filing criminal defamation cases against their political opponents, leading to lot of inconvenience to the person concerned. These petitioners (Mr. Rahul Gandhi and Mr. Arvind Kejriwal) had made certain statements in public, prompting the persons against whom statement was made to file criminal complaint in the Magistrate's court under Section 499, 500 of Indian Penal Code read with Section 199 of Criminal Procedure Code. In such circumstances, Mr. Rahul Gandhi and Mr. Arvind Kejriwal approached the Supreme Court for declaring the aforesaid legal provision as unconstitutional. Supreme Court held that right of a person to his reputation is included in the Right to Life which is protected by Article 21 of the Constitution of India and hence no one can lightly interfere with such right to reputation of a person my making objectionable statements impinging on the reputation of a person and if one does so, he has to face the criminal trial for the same.
Here is the link to the Full Text of the Judgment :
http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/FileServer/2016-05-13_1463126071.pdf
