The Sulthanpur district court granted bail to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case filed against him in 2018. The Congress leader was granted bail after he surrendered in the court today.
Talking to presspersons, Gandhi’s advocate Santosh Pandey said, “Rahul Gandhi surrendered in the court today. He surrendered and the court took him into custody for 30-45 minutes. After that, his bail application was submitted and was accepted by the court. The further date has not been given yet,” ANI reported. Pandey said Rahul Gandhi is innocent and he has not made any defamatory statement.
The case was filed by Vijay Mishra on August 4, 2018, against Gandhi for allegedly making objectionable comments against Shah at a press conference in Bengaluru on May 8 that year during the Karnataka elections.
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.
Gandhi could not attend the last hearing in the special MP-MLA court on January 18 as he was busy with his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
"The BJP is the biggest party of the country. Calling its (then) president a murderer is unjustifiable," Mishra told reporters on Tuesday.
-with PTI inputs.
