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Court rejects Rahul’s plea in defamation case
A magistrate court on Saturday rejected an application filed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi questioning the maintainability of the defamation case filed against
A magistrate court on Saturday rejected an application filed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi questioning the maintainability of the defamation case filed against him and Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary Sitaram Yechury for their alleged defamatory comments against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
City-based lawyer and RSS worker Dhrutiman Joshi had filed the defamation case against Gandhi and Yechury in September 2017 for allegedly linking the RSS to the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh.
Gandhi, in his application filed through advocate Kushal Mor, stated that he and Yechury cannot be prosecuted together and the complaint against the two cannot be clubbed as it pertains to two separate incidents at separate instances.
According to the complaint, after Lankesh’s murder on September 6, 2017, Gandhi, while giving an interview to news channels, said, “Anybody who speaks against the ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), against the ideology of the RSS is pressured, beaten, attacked and even killed”.
Further, about Yechury, the complaint stated that Yechury was heard saying that RSS ideology and RSS men killed Lankesh. These statements were termed defamatory in the complaint.
Referring to this, Gandhi, in his plea, claimed that the statement was made by him outside Parliament while Yechury made the statements in a separate television interview. He claimed that the two cannot be clubbed together in one complaint.
The plea was resisted by the complainant. Joshi claimed that Gandhi and Yechury reacted after Lankesh’s murder on the same day and their narration was identical. He further claimed that during the last general election of 2019, both political parties had come together in West Bengal. Joshi claimed that the comments made by both were connected.
The magistrate court after hearing both sides dismissed Gandhi’s plea. The two leaders will now face trial in the case. The court would be hearing the case next on January 6.
With inputs from PTI
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