In a relief to senior IPS officer D. Roopa, the High Court of Karnataka has quashed a defamation case filed against her by H.N. Sathyanarayana Rao, a retired IPS officer, in connection with the contents of an official letter that she had written to him when he was in service.
She had, in her 2017 letter, referred to various irregularities at the Central prison in Bengaluru, and the speculation around allegations of corruption against Mr. Rao, who was then heading the Department of Prisons.
The High Court said that the defamation case cannot be continued as no prior sanction was neither sought nor granted by the competent authority under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.P.C) to prosecute her for defamation under Section 499 of the Cr.P.C.
