Rahul Gandhi moves Supreme Court in defamation case

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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi approaches the Supreme Court against the Gujarat High Court’s refusal top stay his conviction in the criminal defamation case. | Photo Credit: ANI

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on July 15 moved the Supreme Court to suspend his conviction in a criminal defamation case in which he said a political speech critical of economic offenders and also of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, made in the course of democratic political activity, has been held to be an act of moral turpitude.

Mr. Gandhi also sought a stay of a Gujarat High Court judgment which upheld his conviction. He said the High Court verdict “has no parallel or precedent in the jurisprudence of the law of defamation”.

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The defamation case was related to his “Modi” surname remark allegedly made during a political rally in Karnataka’s Kolar district in 2019.

“Unprecedentedly, in a case of criminal defamation, a maximum sentence of two years has been imposed. This itself is a rarest of rare occurrence. The sentence has been suspended for the asking. However, conviction is not stayed/suspended. This has resulted in the inexorable exclusion of the petitioner from all political elective office for a long period of eight years. That too, in the world’s largest democracy where the petitioner has been a former president of the oldest political movement in the country and is also continuously in the vanguard of opposition political activity,” the petition said.

Challenging the July 7 High Court decision, Mr. Gandhi contended that he was served a two-year conviction for allegedly defaming an “undefined amorphous group” which according to the complainant, Gujarat MLA Purnesh Ishwarbhai Modi, had wronged the reputation of “13 crore people”. Defamation law required the wrong to be done to a well-defined class of people, and not a vague group.

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