When should the court not reject plaint filed for recovery of compensation for libel and mental agony on the ground of limitation?

If the present suit was an action simpliciter for compensation for libel, the same was required to be filed within one year when the libel was published and as noted by this Court in the case of Khawar Butt (supra), single publication rule is more applicable and pragmatic in which case, the present suit had to be filed when the slanderous telecast was shown by defendant No. 1 on 29th July, 2006. However, in the present suit, the plaintiff claims a decree of exemplary or punitive damages in favour of the plaintiff on account of the mental agony, torture, humiliation and hatred suffered by the plaintiff and his family and a decree for loss of reputation and goodwill. As per the plaintiff, the cause of action though started accruing in favour of the plaintiff and against the defendant on 29th July, 2006 when the first telecast was made, however, it continued when it received notices from various authorities including the Medical Council, Police etc as also when the writ petitions were filed and dismissed by this Court and the Allahabad High Court. From the pleadings/claims of the plaintiff in paragraph 54, 55, 56, 57, 58 and 59 of the plaint, it is not the mere publication of libel but thereafter also the continuous course of action which resulted in mental agony, harassment to the plaintiff on which count the plaintiff seeks exemplary and punitive damages. Since the period of limitation for such a claim in the suit would be governed by residuary clause i.e. Article 113 of the Limitation Act, which provides for a period of three years limitation from the time when the right to sue accrues and as per the plaintiff right to sue still subsists and as the present application under Order VII Rule 11 CPC has to be decided based on the averments in the plaint which have to be accepted by way of demurer, the suit cannot be held to be barred by limitation. It is however clarified that since in the present case, the issue of limitation would be a mixed question of fact and law, the same would be decided after the parties have led their respective evidence.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI

CS (OS) 21/2017

Decided On: 27.05.2020

 Ajai Agarwal Vs.  IBNI8 Media & Software Limited and Ors.

Hon'ble Judges/Coram:

Mukta Gupta, J.

Citation: MANU/DE/1113/2020

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Whether wife can show letter written by her husband to her to her father?

There is no allegation that the accused showed the letters to any other than his wife, or that he directed or allowed her to show the letters to any third person. It is plain enough from the contents of the letters that what he wrote was intended exclusively for her eyes alone. Paragraph 10 of the complaint is clear that she betrayed him when she "placed the letters of the accused in the hands of the complainant." When law commands that she shall not be permitted to disclose "any communication" made to her during marriage by her husband, the complainant, her father, ought not to have received those letters and read them. I am afraid that his prying into the letters of his son-in-law to the daughter was indecent, unwarranted and unlawful in the light of Section 122, Evidence Act I am also afraid that he cannot take advantage of a wrong to which he was a party or privy and found a cause for complaint thereon. Further, there is no case in the complaint that the accused's wife showed the letters to any particular person other than the complainant. If from the hands of the complainant it got wider publicity the accused cannot be made responsible therefor. It is not disputed that a communication to be defamed himself will not be a publication within the meaning of defamation law. On the second question as to whether a communication by a husband to his wife would amount to publication in law, the precedent in Wennhak v. Morgan, (1888) 20 QBD 635, appears pertinent The question there was whether the handing over of a letter with a libellous imputation by the libeller to his wife was publication Baron Huddleston, with concurrence of Manisly J., held "that the uttering of a libel by a husband to his wife is no publication." Though the reason for that dictum was the common law recognition of unity of spouses, I think that the same result must follow when communications between husband and wife are precluded by statute from being disclosed; for that which cannot he or is not proved in Court has to be assumed as nonexistent in the eye of law.

 If the letters written by the accused to his wife cannot be proved in Court, either by herself directly or through her father in whose hands she has voluntarily placed them (as I have already held), the imputations therein fall outside the Court's cognizance. The complaint in this case must then fall. The District Magistrate was therefore right when he discharged the accused under Section 263(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. .

Kerala High Court

T.J. Ponnen vs M.C. Varghese on 1 November, 1966

Equivalent citations: AIR 1967 Ker 228, 1967 CriLJ 1511

M. Madhavan Nair, J.

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