Rahul Gandhi was summoned by the District Civil Court in Sultanpur in connection with a 2018 case over using derogatory remarks against Union Home Minister Amit Shah in a Bengaluru conference.
Sultanpur: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was granted bail on Tuesday in a defamation case over his reference to Union Home Minister Amit Shah as a murder accused in 2018. Rahul Gandhi was granted bail on a surety of Rs 25,000 and a personal bond of the same amount. He pleaded innocence in court, and denied any wrongdoing. Advocate Santosh Pandey told reporters, “Rahul Gandhi surrendered in the court today and the court took him into custody for 30-45 minutes. After that, his bail application was submitted and was accepted. The further date has not been given yet.”
The District Civil Court in Sultanpur had issued a summons to him 36 hours earlier to appear before it on a defamation case filed by a BJP leader in August 2018.
The case, initiated by Vijay Mishra on August 4, 2018, stemmed from remarks Gandhi purportedly made against Union Home Minister Amit Shah during a Press conference in Bengaluru on May 8, 2018 during the Karnataka elections.
The complainant cited Rahul Gandhi’s statement during which he asserted that while the BJP professes a commitment to honest and clean politics it is led by a “party President who is an accused in a murder case.”
At the time of Gandhi’s comment, Amit Shah was the BJP President. However, approximately four years prior to Gandhi’s remark, a special CBI court in Mumbai had cleared Shah of charges in a 2005 fake encounter case. This decision came during Shah’s tenure as the Minister of State for Home in Gujarat.
Due to his prior engagements with the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Gandhi was unable to attend the previous hearing on January 18. Mishra, the complainant, expressed his dissatisfaction with Gandhi’s repeated absence and emphasised BJP’s stature as the largest party in the country, deeming the murder accusation against its then-president as unjustifiable.