MS Dhoni. File | Photograph Credit score: PTI
The Madras Excessive Courtroom on Tuesday (October 14, 2025) reserved its orders on an attraction filed by retired IPS officer G. Sampath Kumar in opposition to the refusal of a single choose to reject a ₹100-crore defamation go well with filed in opposition to him and some others by former Indian cricket group captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
A Division Bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and M. Jothiraman deferred their verdict after listening to the arguments of senior counsel PR Raman for the cricketer and advocate RC Paul Kanagaraj for the retired IPS officer on the attraction most well-liked now in opposition to the 2021 order.
What’s the matter about?
It was in 2014 that Mr. Dhoni had filed the go well with within the Excessive Courtroom, in search of ₹100 crore in damages from Zee Media Company, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, then IPS officer Mr. Kumar, and Information Nation Community for having dragged his title into the Indian Premier League (IPL) betting rip-off.
Nonetheless, in 2021, Mr. Kumar filed an utility to reject the plaint filed by the cricketer. Justice N. Seshasayee (since retired) dismissed the appliance on December 9, 2021, on the bottom that it had been filed after seven years of submitting the go well with and on the eve of the graduation of the trial.
Although the procedural legislation doesn’t stipulate any time restrict for submitting such an utility and permits the submitting of the appliance for the rejection of a plain at any time, the one choose had stated: “The court docket’s function doesn’t cease by falling again on the timelessness of this procedural proper however in probing if its judicial course of is tried to be outmanoeuvered by a litigant’s aptitude for abusing judicial course of.”
He additionally wrote: “On this case, points have been framed and the trial was scheduled to begin on December 1, 2021. It seems that this applicant has abruptly woken as much as the existence of a procedural proper to hunt rejection of the plaint, maybe on a belated dawning of enlightenment. Why has he not filed it earlier?”
Justice Seshasayee additionally acknowledged that the reported exoneration of the IPS officer in a departmental inquiry may, at finest, be a protection that might be taken throughout the trial proceedings however actually unfit of in search of the Rejection of the plaint even earlier than the graduation of the trial.
“The courts are required to remind themselves consistently that in a efficiency audit by the countrymen, the courts will stand alone to defend themselves with out a protection for the delay in disposal of circumstances and pendency in litigations, unaided by any of the litigants or their counsel. Courts, due to this fact, have an obligation to stability the procedural proper of a litigant with their very own responsibility to adjudicate the litigation, and to maintain down the pendency, lest the court docket may be accused of granting judicial patronage for creating delay in justice dispensation,” he had noticed.
Even after the dismissal of the appliance in 2021, the trial within the defamation go well with didn’t begin and it was solely on August 11, 2025that Justice CV Karthikeyan ordered the graduation of trial and appointed an advocate commissioner to report the proof of Mr. Dhoni. Thereafter, Mr. Kumar had filed the current attraction together with a plea to condone the delay in difficult the 2021 order.
Printed – October 14, 2025 12:55 pm IST