New Delhi: A criminal defamation complaint has been filed against Congress leader Shashi Tharoor before a court here for his alleged "scorpion" remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In his complaint, Delhi BJP leader Rajeev Babbar said his religious sentiments were hurt.
"I am a devotee of Lord Shiva... However, the accused (Tharoor) completely disregarded the sentiments of crores of Shiva's devotees, made the statement which hurt the sentiments of all the Lord Shiva devotees, both in India and outside the country," the complaint said.
"The complainant's religious sentiments were hurt and accused deliberately did this malicious act, intending to outrage religious feeling of Lord Shiva devotees by insulting their religious believes," it said.
The complaint, filed through advocate Neeraj, termed the statement as an "intolerable abuse" and "absolute vilification" of the faith of millions of people.
Tharoor meanwhile termed as "frivolous" the criminal defamation complaint and alleged that it was an attempt to "throttle the freedom of expression".
Reacting to it, Tharoor told reporters, "The charges are frivolous ... If we start to stifle the right of the people to quote published material then where would our democracy head ?... Where is the freedom of expression ?"
Asked whether he felt the criminal defamation suit against him "is an attempt to throttle his voice", Tharoor said, "Apparently it seems so".
The complaint was filed under section 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code relating to defamation.
The matter is likely to come up for hearing Saturday.
Tharoor had stoked a fresh controversy Sunday while speaking at Bangalore Literature Festival, claiming that an unnamed RSS leader had compared Modi to "a scorpion sitting on a Shivling".
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