Madras High Court reserves orders on S.Ve. Shekher’s plea against conviction, imprisonment

Madras High Court reserves judgement on S.Ve. Shekher's criminal case challenging conviction for derogatory Facebook post.

The Madras High Court on Tuesday (December 17, 2024) reserved its judgement on a criminal revision petition filed by actor S.Ve. Shekher in March this year challenging the conviction and one-month simple imprisonment imposed on him by a trial court on February 19, 2024 in a case booked for having shared a Facebook post containing derogatory remarks against women journalists in 2018.

Justice P. Velmurugan deferred his verdict after hearing the arguments advanced by advocate Venkatesh Mahadevan for the petitioner and government advocate Vinod Kumar. During the course of arguments, the petitioner’s counsel contended that the prosecution had submitted only a screenshot of the reported Facebook post and failed to prove its authenticity.

The counsel said the police had not produced a certificate under Section 65B of the Information Technology Act to prove the authenticity of the electronic record. However, the judge wondered what was the necessity for the prosecution to produce such a certificate when the petitioner himself had tendered an apology while urging the court to quash the case booked against him.

Justice Velmurugan pointed out that while tendering the unconditional apology, the petitioner had stated that the message was authored by someone else and that he had shared it on his Facebook account inadvertently without reading it properly. “Will you share anything and everything that you receive on social media,” the judge asked the revision petitioner’s counsel.

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh had dismissed the quash petition in July 2023 after observing that though the petitioner was an educated person and a well-known figure in the State with a large fan following, a careful reading of the Facebook post, containing abusive and vulgar comments, shared by him on April 19, 2018 had showcased the women journalists in very bad light.

“This court is very hesitant to even translate the message that was forwarded [shared] by the petitioner since, to say the least, it is despicable. The contents are highly derogatory against the Press as a whole in Tamil Nadu... A message that is sent or forwarded in the social media is like an arrow, which has already been shot from the bow.... the sender of the message must take the ownership for the consequences,” the judge had said.