Senior Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Monday received a breather from the Special MP/MLA Court in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur that dismissed a 2018 criminal defamation case against him. The pretained to Gandhi's remarks on Union Home Minister Amit Shah, whom he had described as an accused in a murder case.
The verdict was passed by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Shubham Verma, who said the remarks made by the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha were not defamatory. Notably, Gandhi was present inside the court when Verma passed the verdict and quitted him.
Following the court's order, celebration erupted among his supporters and Congress workers, with the grand old party describing it as a victory of truth.
"Satyamev Jayate! The MP/MLA court in Sultanpur has acquitted Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case," the Congress said on X (previously Twitter).
What's the controversy all about?
Referring to the Sohrabuddin encounter case in 2018, the former Congress president had made some objectionable remarks against Shah, who was the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) back then. "People in India forget that the president of BJP is a murder accused. That's the truth. The party that talks about honesty, decency, has a person who has been accused of murder as president," he had said.The BJP had raised objections over the remarks after which party leader Vijay Mishra, a former chairman of the district cooperative bank, filed the defamation complaint against Gandhi, who is now a Lok Sabha member from Rae Bareli, on August 4, 2018.
On November 27, 2023, Gandhi was summoned by the court to face trail. He subsequently appeared before the court and secured a bail. Later, Mishra sought a comparison of voice sample of Gandhi, but the application was rejected by the trail court.
Mishra moved to the sessions court, which also dismissed revision petition against the order. Later, the Allahabad High Court also dismissed Mishra's petition in which he had challenged the decisions by the two courts.