Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been granted bail by the district court in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur in a defamation case linked to Union minister and BJP leader Amit Shah.
An advocate said the Congress leader surrendered after which the court took him into custody for 30-45 minutes. "After that, his bail application was submitted and was accepted," Advocate Santosh Pandey said.
"The further date has not been given yet. His lawyer said that he is innocent and he has not made any defamatory statement...," Pandey said.
The defamation case was filed by a BJP Vijay Mishra on August 4, 2018, for his remarks against Home Minister Amit Shah at a press conference in Bengaluru on May 8 that year during Karnataka elections.
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The complainant referred to Gandhi's comment that the BJP claims to believe in honest and clean politics but has a party president who is an "accused" in a murder case. Shah was the BJP president when Gandhi made the remark.
About four years before Gandhi's remark, a special CBI court in Mumbai had discharged Shah in a 2005 fake encounter case when he was a minister of state for home in Gujarat.
Rahul Gandhi could not attend the last hearing in the special MP-MLA court on January 18 due as he was busy with his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
