Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in defamation suit | The defence: Line taken out of context, no damage caused

He argued, “It is Purnesh Modi who terms Modhvanik community as the Modi community and there is no evidence of it (Modi community). If the Modi community comprises 13 crore people, it is not an identifiable and determinate community.”

The defence argued that there was no documentary evidence submitted to the court by any of the said 13 crore people, who claim that their community is the Modi community. “Only one sentence should not be taken as defamatory. He has not insulted any community. The Modi surname (does not belong to) only the Modhvanik community but also to (people from) other castes. If proper identity is established, then this case is maintainable…here, identity is not established.”

Panwala also raised the issue of freedom of speech and argued that any citizen of India has got the right to raise her/his voice against any political leader or the government of the day for what they feel is mismanagement or injustice meted out to them. “One sentence of the speech should not be treated as the basis of defamation. Citizens of India have the right to criticise the functioning of the government and its officials.”

He also argued that the CD and DVD of Rahul Gandhi’s public speech submitted to the court should be properly certified. This, he contended, has not been done.

Nine witnesses were examined by court in the case, including one Ganesh Manjunath Yaaji, who testified to having been present and heard Gandhi’s speech at Kolar in Karnataka. Another witness, Dr Shambhubhai Bhatt, an electoral officer, had collected the three CDs from the Kolar district office.

There are 29 documentary pieces of evidence in the case, including CDs, DVD and a pen drive.

Purnesh Modi had filed a complaint of defamation on April 15, 2019, and Chief Judicial Magistrate H H Verma’s judgment in the case on Thursday came in days short of four years. The defamation complaint was registered under IPC Sections 499 and 500.

On October 10, 2019, the accused, Rahul Gandhi, remained present and denied the allegations levelled against him.

Rahul appeared before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate court A N Dave in Surat on October 29, 2021, to give further statements on the deposition of witnesses in the case. He remained present in the courtroom for around 45 minutes and answered 25 questions in Hindi, of which his reply to 20 questions was “I don’t know”; his reply was in the negative in two questions. To one question, he had said, “False case had been made out against me. I have made my disclosure earlier.”