Madras HC confirms S.Ve. Shekher’s conviction, sentence in derogatory Facebook post case

S.Ve. Shekher. File
| Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam

The Madras High Court on Thursday (January 2, 2025) refused to interfere with the conviction and one-month simple imprisonment imposed by a trial court in February 2024 against actor S.Ve. Shekher in a case booked in 2018 for having shared a Facebook post containing derogatory remarks against women journalists.

Justice P. Velmurugan dismissed a criminal revision petition filed by the convict in March last year challenging the verdict passed by a special court for MP/MLA cases. He, however, ordered the suspension of his verdict for a period of 90 days in order to enable the convict to go on appeal before the Supreme Court.

During the course of arguments on the revision plea, 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 also 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 the necessity was 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 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 on social media is like an arrow, which has already been shot from the bow…. the sender of the message must take ownership for the consequences,” the judge had said.