Rahul Gandhi moves Bombay HC against defamation case for allegedly linking RSS with Gauri Lankesh murder

In his plea, Joshi said Gandhi had told reporters within 24 hours of Lankesh’s death that “anybody who speaks against the ideology of the BJP, against the ideology of the RSS, is pressured, beaten, attacked and even killed”. He also alleged in his plea that Yechury too stated it was the RSS’s ideology and RSS people “who killed Lankesh”, who was known for trenchant criticism of right-wing politics.

Both Gandhi and Yechury had pleaded “not guilty” to the defamation charge, after which the judge had granted them bail in July 2019.

In November 2019, a court in Mumbai, presided by Metropolitan Magistrate P I Mokashi, rejected the applications of both Gandhi and Yechury seeking the dismissal of the defamation complaint.

Gandhi, in his plea in the Bombay High Court, stated he was wrongly implicated in the case along with Yechury, who had allegedly made his statements at a different time and place after Lankesh’s murder. Therefore, he claimed, the complaint violates Section 218 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) which stipulates separate charges for separate offences.

The Congress leader, through advocate Kushal Mor, submitted both accused could not be tried at the same trial, and that the concept of joint trial was ‘foreign’ to criminal law and was not sanctioned under the law.

Challenging the November 2019 order, Gandhi argued in his plea that the magistrate “erred” in holding that since the statements relate to the murder of Lankesh, they relate to the same incident and therefore Gandhi and Yechury intended to defame the RSS.

“The statements made by accused Gandhi and Yechury are independent statements made by different individuals at different points of time and there is no community of purpose, continuity of action by which it could be inferred that what they have spoken is in consequence of that common design and their acts are connected with each other,” Gandhi stated in his plea.

He sought direction from the High Court to quash and set aside the complaint, the November 2019 order of the magistrate, and also to quash subsequent proceedings initiated against him by the magistrate.

At the request of Gandhi’s lawyer, the matter was adjourned to December 5.

Meanwhile, other two pleas of Gandhi against defamation cases are pending before the Bombay High Court. He has sought the quashing of a defamation case over his “commander-in-thief” remark made in 2018 about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The High Court has deferred until December 5 the proceedings before the magistrate court in the said case.

Moreover, Gandhi has also challenged an order of the Bhiwandi magistrate court that allowed an RSS functionary to “belatedly” produce certain documents in a criminal defamation complaint.