The Gujarat High Court in an order dated February 16 vacated the stay on the criminal defamation proceedings against Congress leader and Lok Sabha MP Rahul Gandhi after Surat West BJP MLA Purnesh Modi withdrew his petition seeking a stay on the trial court proceedings. The high court had stayed the proceedings in March 2022 after Modi moved a petition seeking a stay on the proceedings before the Surat trial court, primarily on the ground of lack of sufficient evidence. Advocate Harshit Tolia, representing Modi, said, “We have now withdrawn the petition following sufficient evidence coming on the court’s record.” The court of Justice Vipul Pancholi recorded in its order that “sufficient evidence has come on record of the trial court and the pendency of the present matter delays the trial” and permitted the withdrawal while vacating the stay the court had granted earlier. In his defamation suit, the MLA has alleged that Rahul defamed the Modi community when he allegedly compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to economic offenders Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi and purportedly said in a public meeting in Kolar in Karnataka on April 13, 2019, “Why all chors (thieves) have the surname Modi?”.
