The Madras High Court on Monday, April 1, 2024, decided to frame on April 15, issues to be decided in a civil suit filed by incumbent Chief Minister M.K. Stalin in 2019, demanding damages of ₹1.10 crore from Ananda Vikatan publications for having reported that lottery baron Martin Santiago donated ₹500 crore to the DMK towards election funds.
Justice C.V. Karthikeyan asked the plaintiff’s counsel to come prepared with answers to two significant questions: whether the alleged defamation had been committed against the political party, or the plaintiff in his individual capacity, and whether the party’s bylaws authorised its president to file a suit on behalf of it if the defamation had been committeed against it.
The judge made it clear that he does not want the plaintiff’s counsel to file any draft issues before him since it was the duty of the court to frame the issues after hearing the parties concerned. The judge asked the counsel to go through the plaint carefully and come prepared to answer the questions to be posed by the court at the time of framing of issues.
During the hearing, advocate N. Ramesh, representing Ananda Vikatan publications, requested the court to take note of the recent development of electoral bond data having revealed that Mr. Santiago’s firm, Future Gaming and Hotel Services, had purchased bonds worth ₹1,368 crore between April 2019 and January 2024, and ₹509 crore of it having been received by DMK.
However, Justice Karthikeyan said the recent electoral bond data could not be taken note of by the court at the stage of framing of issues and that it could, at best, be used by the defendants as a defence during the course of trial in the suit. He pointed out that the issues could be framed only on the basis of the circumstances that existed at the time of the filing of the suit in 2019.
The suit for damages was filed on June 6, 2019 over an article published in the biweekly Junior Vikatan on May 8, 2019. The article claimed that Income Tax sleuths had raided the business premises of Mr. Santiago only because he had donated ₹500 crore to the DMK towards election funds, but the plaintiff asserted that the article was entirely false, malicious, misleading and highly defamatory.
Pointing out that the article was published with photographs of his family members and himself, the plaintiff stated that the sole intention of the publication was to damage his reputation. He also said the publishers did not show any remorse even after receipt of a legal notice issued on his behalf on May 8, 2019 and instead carried another article mocking the legal notice.
Though Mr. Stalin had quantified the damage caused to his reputation to be ₹100 crore, he restricted the relief to ₹1.1 crore and said that he intended to use the money for charitable purposes. Since the publishers had not filed their written statement in response to the suit, despite several adjournments, Justice Abdul Quddhose had intiailly set them ex-parte on January 10, 2022.
However, on December 22, 2023 Justice N. Sathish Kumar condoned the delay of 632 days in filing the written statement on condition that the publishers pay ₹10,000 to the Cancer Institute at Adyar in Chennai before January 8, 2024. The delay was condoned after taking into consideration the intervention of COVID-19 and to give a fair opportunity to the publishers to defend themselves in the suit.
Subsequently, on January 9, 2024, Justice Kumar was informed of the costs having been paid to the Cancer Institute. Hence, he took the written statement, filed on behalf of the publishers, on file and ordered the suit to be moved to the next stage of framing of issues.
