SC derides “added spice”, Kangana Ranaut withdraws plea on farmers’ protest tweet

On 12 September, Friday, the Supreme Court told actor and BJP MP Kangana Ranaut, "It was not a simple ‘retweet’ as you say. You had added something, you added spice to what was existing" while refusing to entertain her plea seeking the quashing of a criminal defamation complaint over her comments during the 2020–21 farmers' protest.

A bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta made it clear that the interpretation of her tweet — and any clarifications she made — were matters to be decided during the trial, not in a quashing petition. Ranaut's counsel argued she had only retweeted an existing post and had provided a clarification, but Justice Mehta noted, "The clarification could be given in the trial court and not in the quashing proceedings." When her lawyer cited travel difficulties in Punjab, the bench advised she could seek exemption from appearance during the trial.

Ranaut’s petition challenged an order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which found there were “specific allegations against the petitioner who is a celebrity, that false and defamatory imputations by her in the retweet have dented the respondent's reputation and lowered her in her own estimation, as also in the eyes of others. Therefore, filing of the complaint to vindicate her rights cannot be termed mala fide”. This resulted in the case moving forward to trial.

The controversy goes back to Ranaut’s retweet during the protest, where she commented about an elderly woman, Mahinder Kaur (73) from Bathinda, claiming she was the same "dadi" who had been part of the Shaheen Bagh protest.

Kaur’s complaint stated, "false imputation and defamatory remarks against the complainant hurt her pride, honour, and defamed her on social media". Kaur emphasised she’d been involved in the agitation against the Narendra Modi government’s then-new farm laws since the beginning but had no link to the Shaheen Bagh protester featured in the tweet.

In high court proceedings, Ranaut’s counsel argued that the summoning order to her violated criminal procedure and noted the requisite report from Twitter (now X) was not received before she was summoned.

They also claimed Ranaut had no intention to harm Kaur’s reputation.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court declined to intervene at this stage, reiterating that, "Don't ask us to comment on what has been written… It may prejudice your trial. You may have a valid defence; we are not on that. But then there are other ways to do that..."

This case forms part of the broader tensions that arose during the highly charged farmers’ protest era, when several public figures — not just politicians — faced scrutiny for their social media statements for and against the farmers' cause.

Ranaut, however, has been embroiled in more than one such controversy — and curiously, the most cited are the ones involving other women, such as the Punjab CISF officer who slapped her at an airport for further remarks on the farmers’ protest. The BJP reportedly asked its legislator to take it easy soon after.