Madras High Court sets aside conviction, imprisonment imposed on BJP leader H. Raja in two criminal cases

The MadrasHigh Court on Tuesday (September 1, 2026) allowed a couple of criminal appeals filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader H. Raja and set aside his conviction as well as six months of simple imprisonment imposed on him by a trial court in 2024 in two criminal cases.

Also read | BJP leader H. Raja sentenced to six-month imprisonment for derogatory social media posts

Justice V. Lakshminarayanan concurred with the arguments of senior counsel N. Ananthapadmanabhan and S. Ravi, representing the appellant, that the conviction and sentences imposed by a special court for MP/MLA cases in Chennai on December 2, 2024, could not be sustained.

One of the two cases booked against Mr. Raja was related to a tweet reportedly posted on his X handle on April 18, 2018, containing offensive remarks with a veiled reference to former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi and his daughter Kanimozhi.

The other case had been booked in connection with a March 6, 2018 tweet calling for the demolition of rationalist leader Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s statues. Passing identical orders in both the appeals, Justice Lakshminarayanan said, the police had miserably failed to explain the delay of several months in registering the First Information Reports in both the cases.

Though the complaints had been lodged in March and April 2018, the FIRs had been registered only in September 2018, the judge pointed out. “The unexplained delay in filing of FIR raises strong suspicion that the complaint could have been manipulated or fabricated, in order to falsely implicate the accused. Delay in filing the FIR grants time for consultation / fabrication and introduces a concocted story,” he wrote.

Further, underlining the appellant had denied having posted any such offensive tweets, the judge said, a tweet, being an electronic document within the meaning of Section 2(1)(t) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, has to be proved in accordance with Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act but the police had failed to prove it in accordance with law.

“Apart from that, as rightly contended by Mr. Ananthapadmanabhan, no gadgets had been seized during the course of investigation in order to substantiate the accusation made against the appellant. In fine, the existence of the tweet and attributing of the same to the appellant and the alleged consequences have not been proved in the manner known to law,” the judge concluded.