A court in New Delhi today recorded the pre-summoning evidence of a  person who has filed a defamation case against home minister Sushilkumar Shinde for his remarks linking BJP and RSS to Hindu terrorism.   The petitioner, VP Kumar recorded his statement before metropolitan magistrate Amitabh Rawat, who has fixed the matter for hearing the arguments on summoning of Shinde and also for further recording of evidence on February 13.

"On request, put up for further pre-summoning of evidence on February 13," the court said.

The court asked the complainant to record the evidence after it heard his counsel Monika Arora, who said that the home minister had "wilfully" made the "derogatory" remarks to cause ill will and hatred among communities.

Kumar in his petition alleged that Shinde's remarks were aimed at polarising minority votes for the 2014 general elections.

"The impugned statement is not only defamatory in its natural meaning but also contains the imputation and insinuation that Hindu religion is involved in anti-national and terrorist activities," the petition said adding the minister "has used the words saffron as synonyms of terrorism, which is totally absurd, wrong, mischievous and defamatory".

Addressing the AICC meeting at Jaipur on Sunday, Shinde had said, "...we have got an investigation report that be it RSS or BJP, their training camps are promoting Hindu terrorism. We are keeping a strict vigil on all this".