New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is set to appear in a Surat court today to challenge his conviction and two-year prison sentence in a 2019 defamation case. The plea to set aside the magistrate’s order is likely to be filed in a sessions court.
According to NDTV, Gandhi will also ask for an interim stay on the conviction, which would restore his Lok Sabha membership.
Gandhi was sentenced to two years imprisonment by the Surjart CJM court, which also gave him a period of 30 days to move a higher court against the order.
BJP MLA and former Gujarat minister Purnesh Modi had lodged a complaint against Gandhi after he had allegedly asked in a rally in Kolar of Karnataka in 2019, “Why do all the thieves, be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi or Narendra Modi, have ‘Modi’ in their names?” Gujarat Police had FIR filed an under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 499 and 500 (dealing with defamation).
In his statement before the Surat’s chief judicial magistrate (CJM) A.N .Dave in 2021, Gandhi had denied making any defamatory remarks.
A day after his two-year sentence was announced, Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha.
Meanwhile on Friday, a Patna court had asked Gandhi to appear before it on April 12 in a 2019 defamation case filed by BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi pertaining to the same comments. Gandhi had been granted bail in this defamation case on July 6, 2019.
On a separate note, another defamation case has been filed against Gandhi by a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker at a court in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar. The complainant, Kamal Bhadauria, alleged that a comment made by Gandhi during Bharat Jodo Yatra in January is defamatory towards RSS, Bar and Bench reported. Gandhi had referred to RSS workers as “Kauravas of the twenty-first century”.
“You (Rahul Gandhi) are fully aware of what a heinous act the Kauravas have done, yet you called the hardworking, dedicated, and self-sacrificing Sangh like RSS as Kauravas and also said that these people do not say, ‘Har Har Mahadev’, don’t say ‘Jai Shri Ram’ which shows your disgusting mentality,” the complainant said.