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Lucknow special court grants bail to Rahul Gandhi in defamation case
Additional chief judicial magistrate Alok Varma granted bail to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on production of two sureties of ₹20,000 each.
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LUCKNOW: A Lucknow special court on Tuesday granted bail to Rae Bareli MP and leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, in connection with a defamation case filed against him over his remarks made in December 2022 during the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Additional chief judicial magistrate Alok Varma granted bail to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on production of two sureties of ₹20,000 each.
The judge had earlier ordered Rahul Gandhi to appear in person after he failed to attend the previous five hearings. Gandhi’s lawyer Pranshu Agrawal had sought an exemption from personal appearance for the Congress leader, but the court had rejected the request.
Advocate Vivek Tewari filed the complaint against Rahul Gandhi on behalf of Uday Shankar Srivastava, a former director of the Border Roads Organisation, in January 2023, alleging that a remark by the Congress leader on a clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Yangtse area of Tawang Sector on December 9, 2022,-were defamatory to the armed forces.
According to the complaint, Gandhi mentioned the clash on the border of Arunachal Pradesh during the yatra in Rajasthan on December 16, 2022, and said that “people will ask what all about Bharat Jodo Yatra, but will not ask even once about the beating of our soldiers by Chinese soldiers”.
The Congress leader had earlier challenged the special MP/MLA court order summoning him on February 11, 2025, but his petition was rejected by the Allahabad high court’s justice Subhash Vidyarthi on June 2, 2025, who ruled that the freedom of speech and expression was subject “to the reasonable restrictions and it does not include the freedom to make statements which are defamatory to any person or defamatory to the Indian Army”.
