It must be noted that very recently, the Bombay High Court quashed a ruling of the Bhiwandi court, which had permitted some documents as additional documents for producing the evidence in the premeditated criminal defamation case against the leader of the Indian National Congress, Rahul Gandhi, by a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker.
The order was related to Justice Prithviraj K. Chavan, who supported Gandhi’s submission that the trial court judgment infringed on a previous order of the High Court.
The case goes back to the year 2014 when the functionary of the Indian right-wing organization, the ideological progenitor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, filed a complaint against the British-born Gandhi for defamation, stating that RSS was involved in assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
Pending the outcome of this, Kunte went to the Bhiwandi magistrate and filed a complaint, which resulted in this senior Congress leader being called.
However, in the same year, 2021, the High Court, a bench consisting of one judge, dismissed the petition filed by Kunte, in which he sought admission or rejection of the speech imputed to have defamed Gandhi. Justice Revati Mohite Dere had held that the police cannot examine an accused person to accept or deny annexures to the said petition.
Nevertheless, on June 3, 2023, the Bhiwandi Magistrate Court went ahead to accept documents that were part of the writ petition that Gandhi had filed in 2014 without any objection from the former. Due to that, the Congress leader has had to turn to the High Court, stating that the order issued by the trial court is infringing on the 2021 judgment.
Wisdom, the High Court has now dismissed the order passed by the Bhiwandi court, which is quite a relief for the former Congress chief in the ongoing defamation case.
The case was widely followed for its political and legal consequences. The High Court ruling could now be considered by many as a precedent for the defeat of the RSS functionary and as a win for Rahul Gandhi, who had been up against the libel charges with so much passion.
