A Sultanpur court acquitted Rahul Gandhi over his 2018 Amit Shah remarks.
BJP leader Vijay Mishra had filed the complaint alleging criminal defamation.
Gandhi attended the verdict hearing and maintained his remarks were taken out of context.
Rahul Gandhi Gets Relief As Sultanpur Court Acquits Him In Amit Shah Defamation Case
The case stemmed from a complaint filed by BJP leader Vijay Mishra, then the party’s district vice-president, over remarks Rahul Gandhi allegedly made in Bengaluru ahead of the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections
Summary
Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi was acquitted on Monday by a special MP/MLA court in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur in a criminal defamation case over his 2018 remarks about Amit Shah, who was then the BJP president.
Rahul Gandhi, the Congress MP, attended the hearing as Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Shubham Verma delivered the verdict. The judgment had initially been scheduled for October 13 before being deferred to October 26.
The case stemmed from a complaint filed by BJP leader Vijay Mishra, then the party’s district vice-president, over remarks Rahul Gandhi allegedly made in Bengaluru ahead of the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections. Mishra sought proceedings under Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code, which deal with criminal defamation.
According to the complaint, Gandhi had described Shah as a “murder accused” and questioned the BJP’s claims of honesty and integrity.
“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,” Gandhi was accused of saying.
The reference concerned allegations linking Shah to the 2005 extrajudicial killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh.
Gandhi contested the complaint, maintaining that his remarks had been taken out of context. Mishra argued that the comments were defamatory.
Speaking to ANI on November 28, 2023, after the court summoned Gandhi, Mishra had explained why he pursued the complaint.
“I was the vice president of BJP when this incident happened...When I heard these allegations, I felt very pained because I am a 33-year-old worker of the party. I filed a complaint regarding this through my lawyer and this continued for almost 5 years,” he said.
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Ahead of Monday’s verdict, Uttar Pradesh Congress president Aradhana Mishra ‘Mona’ expressed confidence in the judicial process.
“We have complete faith in the judiciary. Rahul Gandhi ji is going to Sultanpur for that case only,” she told PTI Videos.
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