Madras High Court Suspends Sentence Imposed On BJP's H Raja Over Comments Against Periyar, Kanimozhi

Justice L Victoria Gowri suspended the 6-month sentence imposed on him by the Special Court for Trial of Cases Against MLAs/MPs in Chennai The special court had sentenced Raja for the comments made by him in 2018. The orders were passed after the High Court refused to quash the case against him and directed the Special Court to complete the case within 3 months.

Raja had tweeted against EV Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar saying that the Atheist leader's statues should be broken and also addressing Periyar as a caste fanatic. Raja had also made insensitive remarks against Kanimozhi, calling her the illegitimate child of former TN CM Karunanidhi.

In 2023, when Raja first moved the High Court to quash these FIRs registered against him, Justice Anand Venkatesh observed that Raja's comments hovered around hate speech.

In April this year, Raja had moved a second petition to quash the FIR. This attempt was also unsuccessful as the High Court dismissed the plea noting that it lacked merits. The court noted that the grounds raised in the second quash petition were purely factual and had already been canvassed in the previous petition.

Following this, Raja approached the Supreme Court. Dismissing the SLPs filed by Raja, the bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Prashant Kumar Mishra orally commented about the need for politicians to be circumspect about their public comments.

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Mad) 491

Case Title: H Raja v The State

Case No: Crl A 1635 of 2024