New Delhi: The Surat Sessions Court has suspended Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s two-year sentence awarded to him in the 2019 criminal defamation case until a decision is made on his appeal challenging his conviction.
As per the rules, Gandhi’s Lok Sabha membership should now be restored.
His appeal will be heard on April 13, and the bail he has been granted in the case has now been extended until that date. The Congress leader moved the court with a plea to set aside the magistrate’s order that convicted and sentenced him to two-year in prison, resulting in his disqualification from the Lok Sabha.
On Monday, April 3, several senior Congress leaders including K.C. Venugopal, Ashok Gehlot, Digvijaya Singh and Anand Sharma accompanied Gandhi to the court.
Gandhi was sentenced to two years imprisonment by the Surjart CJM court, which also gave him a period of 30 days to move a higher court against the order.
BJP MLA and former Gujarat minister Purnesh Modi had lodged a complaint against Gandhi after he had allegedly asked in a rally in Kolar of Karnataka in 2019, “Why do all the thieves, be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi or Narendra Modi, have ‘Modi’ in their names?” Gujarat Police had FIR filed an under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 499 and 500 (dealing with defamation).
In his statement before Surat’s chief judicial magistrate (CJM) A.N . Dave in 2021, Gandhi had denied making any defamatory remarks.
A day after his two-year sentence was announced, Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha.
Meanwhile, on Friday, a Patna court had asked Gandhi to appear before it on April 12 in a 2019 defamation case filed by BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi pertaining to the same comments. Gandhi had been granted bail in this defamation case on July 6, 2019.
On a separate note, another defamation case has been filed against Gandhi by a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker at a court in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar. The complainant, Kamal Bhadauria, alleged that a comment made by Gandhi during Bharat Jodo Yatra in January is defamatory towards RSS, Bar and Bench reported. Gandhi had referred to RSS workers as “Kauravas of the twenty-first century”.
“You (Rahul Gandhi) are fully aware of what a heinous act the Kauravas have done, yet you called the hardworking, dedicated, and self-sacrificing Sangh like RSS as Kauravas and also said that these people do not say, ‘Har Har Mahadev’, don’t say ‘Jai Shri Ram’ which shows your disgusting mentality,” the complainant said.