Sultanpur: A special MP/MLA court in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur district acquitted Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Monday in a 2018 criminal defamation case over his remarks about Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (Special Magistrate) Shubham Verma presided. The complaint stemmed from a press conference in Bengaluru in May 2018, during the Karnataka assembly campaign, where Gandhi said people forget that the BJP president is a murder accused. Shah, then the BJP's national president, had been discharged by a special CBI court in 2014.
BJP leader Vijay Mishra, a former chairman of the Sultanpur district cooperative bank and a former vice-president of the party's Sultanpur unit, filed the complaint on August 4, 2018, under Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code. Gandhi was summoned in November 2023 and secured bail.
Gandhi's counsel Kashi Prasad Shukla confirmed the acquittal. Santosh Pandey, who appeared for Mishra, said the court examined three questions: whether the CD of the voice recording filed by the complainant was genuine, whether the complainant was an aggrieved person, and whether the statement was defamatory. "The court found the CD genuine, but did not find the complainant to be an aggrieved person, nor the statement against Amit Shah to be defamatory. I have yet to study the full judgment," Pandey said. Mishra said he would study the certified copy and, after legal advice, decide on a revision petition.
Congress leaders welcomed the verdict. Pawan Khera said the court had upheld that the remark was not defamatory and called the acquittal a "badge of honour" for Gandhi.
The verdict closed out a morning that had begun badly. Around 10.15 am, vehicles trailing Gandhi's convoy collided on the Purvanchal Expressway as he travelled to Sultanpur for the hearing. A police officer said a private vehicle at the front of the convoy, belonging to local Congress leaders, suddenly applied the brakes, and vehicles behind rammed into one another near the 91-km milestone in the Haliyapur area. Five vehicles and an ambulance were involved. Some Congress workers and security personnel were injured. Gandhi was safe and no major injuries were reported.
By afternoon, UP Police had constituted a Special Investigation Team on the directions of Director General of Police Rajeev Krishna. It will be headed by Inspector General of Police, Lucknow Range, Kiran S, with Additional Superintendent of Police, Sultanpur, Brij Narayan Singh, and Deputy Superintendent of Police (Traffic), Sultanpur, Ram Krishna Chaturvedi, as members.
The team will examine the cause of the accident and whether there was negligence or a lapse in security, escort arrangements or traffic management, and has been asked to suggest measures to prevent a repeat. It will report to the police headquarters.
Gandhi landed at Lucknow's Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport in the morning, where hundreds of Congress workers had gathered. He did not speak to reporters before leaving for the court.