The Madras High Court on Tuesday (October 14, 2025) reserved its orders on an appeal filed by retired IPS officer G. Sampath Kumar against the refusal of a single judge to reject a ₹100-crore defamation suit filed against him and a few others by former Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and M. Jothiraman deferred their verdict after hearing the arguments of senior counsel P.R. Raman for the cricketer and advocate R.C. Paul Kanagaraj for the retired IPS officer on the appeal preferred now against the 2021 order.

What is the case about?

It was in 2014 that Mr. Dhoni had filed the suit in the High Court, seeking ₹100 crore in damages from Zee Media Corporation, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, then IPS officer Mr. Kumar, and News Nation Network for having dragged his name into the Indian Premier League (IPL) betting scam.

₹100-crore defamation suit filed by M.S. Dhoni: Madras High Court orders commencement of trial

However, in 2021, Mr. Kumar filed an application to reject the plaint filed by the cricketer. Justice N. Seshasayee (since retired) dismissed the application on December 9, 2021, on the ground that it had been filed after seven years of filing the suit and on the eve of the commencement of the trial.

Though the procedural law does not stipulate any time limit for filing such an application and permits the filing of the application for the rejection of a plaint at any time, the single judge had said: "The court's role does not stop by falling back on the timelessness of this procedural right but in probing if its judicial process is attempted to be outmanoeuvered by a litigant's aptitude for abusing judicial process."

He also wrote: "In this case, issues were framed and the trial was scheduled to commence on December 1, 2021. It appears that this applicant has suddenly woken up to the existence of a procedural right to seek rejection of the plaint, perhaps on a belated dawning of enlightenment. Why has he not filed it earlier?"

Justice Seshasayee also stated that the reported exoneration of the IPS officer in a departmental inquiry could, at best, be a defence that could be taken during the trial proceedings but certainly not worthy of seeking the rejection of the plaint even before the commencement of the trial.

Madras High Court dismisses Zee Media Corporation's appeal against order in favour of cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni

"The courts are required to remind themselves constantly that in a performance audit by the countrymen, the courts will stand alone to defend themselves without a defence for the delay in disposal of cases and pendency in litigations, unaided by any of the litigants or their counsel. Courts, therefore, have a duty to balance the procedural right of a litigant with their own duty to adjudicate the litigation, and to keep down the pendency, lest the court might be accused of granting judicial patronage for creating delay in justice dispensation," he had observed.

Even after the dismissal of the application in 2021, the trial in the defamation suit did not commence and it was only on August 11, 2025, that Justice C.V. Karthikeyan ordered the commencement of trial and appointed an advocate commissioner to record the evidence of Mr. Dhoni. Thereafter, Mr. Kumar had filed the present appeal along with a plea to condone the delay in challenging the 2021 order.

Madras High Court reserves orders on retired IPS officer's plea to reject M.S. Dhoni's ₹100-crore defamation suit