The Supreme Court rejected on Friday AAP functionary Raghav Chadha's plea to wriggle out of trial in a Rs 10-crore defamation case filed by finance minister Arun Jaitley against him and five others, including Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, on the contention that there was no law making a re-tweet defamatory.

Chadha's counsel, Anand Grover, argued that his client had been summoned by the trial court without there being any law to prosecute a re-tweet of an allegedly defamatory tweet by Kejriwal. "There is no law and no ruling by any court in the world declaring that re-tweet of a tweet amounts to publication of defamatory material which could be liable for prosecution," Grover said.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud disagreed with Grover's contention. Justice Chandrachud said, "Take for example a tweet which is per se derogatory, abusive or contains graphic pornographic material. Can one who re-tweets such a tweet say he has only re-tweeted the material and is not the author of it and hence should not face prosecution?"