Shashi Tharoor’s defamation notice mischievous: Ravi Shankar Prasad

NEW DELHI: Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has dismissed the defamation notice sent by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor for calling him “accused in a murder case” as “mischievous and misconstrued” and sought an apology from him.

Prasad had hit back at Tharoor after the latter claimed while speaking at the Bangalore Literature Festival that an RSS leader had compared PM Modi to “a scorpion sitting on a Shivling”.

“There arises no question of any apology or deleting the tweet,” Prasad said in a response through his lawyer to Tharoor’s October 30 notice.


A day earlier Prasad had said in a post on microblogging site Twitter: “Shashi Tharoor who is accused in a murder case has attempted to disrespect Lord Shiva... Rahul Gandhi must apologize to all Hindus.”

In his reply to Tharoor’s legal notice, Prasad said: “Under the garb of speech and expression as guaranteed by Article 19 of the Constitution of India Tharoor has sought to abuse and defame the PM by calling him a scorpion sitting on Shiv Linga.” He said Tharoor’s comment had hurt the religious sentiments of the followers of Lord Shiva.