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Mumbai: A magistrate`s court in Bhiwandi on Wednesday granted bail to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case filed against him for claiming, at a 2014 election rally, that the RSS had killed Mahatma Gandhi.
The next hearing in the case, filed by a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist, Rajesh Kunte, was fixed for January 28, 2017.
After getting bail, Gandhi told his supporters that he was happy to be able to fight this battle. “I have come to the court to fight for Gandhiji’s ideology,” said the Congress leader.
Attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive, Gandhi asked party workers: “You are standing in queues. Have you seen any rich people standing there?”
The PM will give money from the pockets of poor people to 15-20 businessmen, whose names I won’t take as you already know them. He is running the government for those 15 businessmen, said Gandhi.
Rahul arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday evening.
Addressing a rally in the run-up to the 2014 General Elections in the powerloom town on the outskirts of Mumbai, Rahul had claimed, “The RSS people had killed Gandhi.”
He had, on September 1, preferred to face the trial as an accused in the defamation case for his remark against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, submitting before the Supreme Court that he stood by “every word” of his statement.
The Congress vice president expressed his readiness to face the trial after the apex court refused to interfere with the criminal proceedings pending against him before the trial court.
Rahul then withdrew the appeal filed by him against the Bombay High Court judgment refusing to quash the defamation case and summons issued to him by the trial court.
The apex court also declined Rahul’s plea that he be exempted from personal appearance before the Bhiwandi court which had taken cognizance of the complaint of an RSS functionary by summoning him as an accused in the case.
