The Supreme Court will hear Rahul Gandhi’s plea in the defamation case filed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday. A bench of Justices BR Gavai, PS Narasimha and Sanjay Kumar will hear the case. Earlier, the hearing of this case was held on August 2. Then Rahul Gandhi filed a reply in the court and said that the legal process has been misused. I was called arrogant when I refused to apologise, Rahul Gandhi said in the affidavit that he has been given the maximum punishment in the defamation case, due to which he lost his MPSHIP. Purnesh Modi, who sued him, himself does not originally belong to the Modi community, so he should not be punished.
In 2019, the BJP had filed a lawsuit
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Gujarat minister Purnesh Modi had filed a criminal defamation case against Gandhi in 2019 over his remarks that “why all thieves have Modi as their surname?”. The said remarks were made by Gandhi during an election rally in Kolar, Karnataka on April 13, 2019. In an affidavit filed before the apex court, Gandhi said Modi used “slanderous” words like “arrogant” for him in his reply only because he had refused to apologise.
“Using the influence under the Criminal Procedure and Representation of the People Act to compel the petitioner to tender an apology without any fault is a gross abuse of the judicial process and should not be accepted by this court,” Gandhi said in his affidavit. “The petitioner has said and has always maintained that he is not guilty of the offence and the conviction is not sustainable and if he had to apologise and compromise, he would have done so long ago,” Gandhi said in the affidavit.
