The Madras High Court on Tuesday extended the stay on the criminal defamation proceedings pending before a Judicial Magistrate court in The Nilgiris against eight Tamil actors.

Muralidharan extended the stay while passing further interim orders on a criminal original petition from the actors – Suriya, Sarath Kumar, Sathyaraj, Vivek, Arun Vijay, Sri Priya, Cheran and Vijay Kumar.

Rozario Maria Soosai, a journalist in Ooty, filed a criminal defamation complaint against the eight actors in 2009 for abusing and making statements degrading the reputation of a Tamil newspaper and its reporter at a meeting of South Indian Film Artistes Association in Chennai.