Defamation refers to an act of publishing a piece of defamatory information or statement that damages the reputation of an individual or an entity. In other words, it is a malicious and deliberate attempt to harm a person’s reputation or social standing in society. One of the most important essential requirement for filing a suit against defamation is that the defamatory statement must be false.
In India, the offence of defamation falls under both civil and criminal law. Under civil law, defamation falls under the law of torts and therefore the remedy available to the victim is to get compensated with the adequate damages.
Generally, there are two kinds of defamation-
Slander- when defamation occurs in transitory form i.e. through gestures or spoken words/statement, it is known as “slander”.
Libel – when a defamatory statement is written or published somewhere, example – newspaper, social media etc., it is called libel.
Essentials for defamation
Someone has made or published a statement
The statement must be defamatory
The statement must refer to the plaintiff
The statement must be false
The statement must be communicated to some third party
The statement must cause damage to the reputation of the plaintiff.

Case law- D.P. Choudhary v. kumari manjulata [AIR 1997]
Facts – In this case, a seventeen-year-old girl named Manjula [respondent], belonged to a renowned family was living with her parents in jodhpur. One day when the respondent had gone to attend night lectures and afterwards a local daily newspaper named Dainik Nava Jyoti published a piece of news saying that she ran away with a boy named Kamlesh. The family filed a defamation suit against the newspaper company.

Judgement - The court held the newspaper liable for being negligent and utterly irresponsible. The court also orders the newspaper company to pay the amount of 10,000rs. as damages to the victim.

Defences against Defamation
True statement or truth
The fact that the statement or information communicated by the defendant is true is considered as one of the strongest defence that the defendant can opt for. Therefore, if the defendant is saying the truth while making the statement against the defendant than it will not be contemplated as slander or libel.
Reasonable and Bonafide statement
A fair, reasonable and bona fide comment or criticism against the plaintiff will not amount to a defamatory statement as long as it has made in the public interest and without any malafide intentions to hurt the goodwill of the claimant.
For example, An NGO criticizing the policies of the government.
Immunity or privilege
Sometimes, there are certain occasions where the defamatory statements are treated as justified and covered under the blanket of privilege rather than considered as libellous or slanderous. At these privileged occasions, the law puts forward the right to freedom of speech before the claimant’s right against defamation or right to reputation.

These are further of two types are-

Absolute Privilege
The defence of absolute privilege involves the defendant having an absolute right of making such a statement. Therefore, if any person communicating a potentially defamatory statement is under the absolute privilege of making such comment during that time than any statement quoted by him cannot be used in a defamation suit against him.
Thus, under absolute privilege, an individual gets immunity from defamatory actions against him.

For instance-
a statement made by a person holding a government office
Comments and statements made during legislative debates.

Qualified Privilege
The defence of qualified privilege applies when a person who made the statement is qualified for the right of making such statement but had not made it intending to diminish the reputation of the plaintiff thereby immune from any defamation suit under qualified privilege.
Here, the burden of proof lies on the plaintiff i.e. the claimant has to prove that the defendant has made the alleged defamatory statement with some malicious intentions or ill will.

For instance-

Criticism against a recently published book
Criticism of movies by audience and critics through their reviews
The only difference between absolute and qualified privilege is that -an absolute privilege will protect the defendant even if the statement is false or the intentions are malicious but under-qualified privilege the intentions of the defendant needs to honest and made in good faith.

Amends
Amends by the defendant can also act as a good defence in defamation cases especially under English law.
Amends means rectifying the mistake made by the defendant himself. Thus, if the defendant himself admits the error on his part and rectify it by correcting the defamatory statement made against the plaintiff.
For example – a news anchor corrected his statement previously made by him against a government official.

Conclusion
The law and the justice system all over the world believe and ensure that an image and reputation of every individual or entity all over the world needs to be protected as it took almost took an entire existence for a person/entity to create an image and gain his reputation and goodwill. A small defamatory statement can cause serious damage to a person’s standing in the society and money as a compensation for it might not be enough as a remedy but our legislation and justice system came a long way in providing better remedies to the victims of defamation.