HC stays order seeking financial records of Kapil Sibal's son

The Delhi High Court today stayed the operation of a trial court's order seeking certain financial records of former union minister Kapil Sibal's son, Amit.
The trial court on January 10 had asked senior advocate Amit Sibal, who has filed a criminal defamation complaint against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and others, to provide the documents.
Justice S P Garg stayed the January 10 order after an application seeking stay came up for hearing before the court, which also sought the response of Bhushan. The court fixed the matter for further hearing on April 17.
The Magisterial court had passed the order while allowing an application filed by Bhushan seeking "ledger book, account book and bill book of Amit for the year 2006 to 2011".

Bhushan had claimed that the documents were needed to check the correctness of the statement of complainant Amit, recorded before the court in the case.
The trial court had said "the contention of the accused seems to have force as correctness of the statement of the complainant (Amit Sibal) which he deposed before the court is to be verified and same can be verified by confrontation of documents as mentioned in the application".

"In the considered view of this court, the documents so required would make it clear whether complainant appeared for the firm and got paid for his legal services after his father became Minister of Telecommunication and IT," it had said.

Amit had opposed the application, saying it was vague.
In his complaint, Amit had alleged that the accused had defamed him by their statements against him at a press conference in May 2013 claiming that he had acted in a "dishonest" and "unethical" manner in helping a major telecom company to illegally avoid the tax liability by using his father's position as Minister of Telecommunication and IT at that time.
Amit had denied the charges and had also claimed that he was not the lawyer of the telecom firm.
The court had on July 24, 2014, summoned Kejriwal, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, Bhushan and former AAP leader Sazia Ilmi and on September 20, 2014, it had put them on trial for charge under section 500 (defamation) of the IPC.

The accused had pleaded not guilty to the offence and had claimed trial. All the accused are before the high court seeking quashing of a defamation complaint.