Jignesh Mevani booked for defamation for posting morphed image of columnist Shefali Vaidya

Gujarat MLA, Jignesh Mevani finds himself in a spot of bother after a defamation case was filed against him for tweeting a morphed picture of freelance columnist Shefali Vaidya.

The incident dates back to May 29 when Mevani had tweeted a picture showing Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, spiritual leader, Sri Sri Ravishankar and Shefali Vaidya together. Along with the picture there was another from the Paresh Rawal starrer, 'Oh My God'

Mevani tried to draw a parallel between the two pictures and said, "seeing this (picture) I really want to say Oh My God! It has become too filmy. Did art predict real life? Like a film, these three are also big actors." He also went on to call them dramebaaz in the same tweet.

Shefali Vaidya in her complaint stated that her photo was downloaded from her Facebook account and later it was cropped and morphed along with the photos of Adityanath and Ravi Shankar. She also said that the comments made were defamatory in nature and punishable under the Indian Penal Code.

The Paud police in Pune registered the complaint under Section 500 of the IPC and also under Section 66 (C) of the Information Technology Act 2000. Investigations are on and the police are likely to seek a response from Mevani soon.

When contacted, Shefali told OneIndia that, Jignesh Mevani is no ordinary person. He is an elected MLA with links to the Congress. He cannot use his position and power to abuse, humiliate and bully a private citizen like me just because I am a woman and he dislikes my views. The morphed picture he tweeted was sexist and defamatory and caused a lot of trauma to my kids. I was forced to file a police complaint. I have faith in the law of the land, she also said.

The tweet by Mevani was re-tweeted over 900 times and had around 3,000 likes. Mevani says that he deleted the tweet after finding out that the picture was morphed. "I am told that this is a photoshopped image. Apologies for posting it without verification. Deleting my previous tweet now and will be careful in future. We all should be careful about this and whenever we get to know that it is fabricated, we should delete it," he also said.