Rahul Gandhi gets bail to appeal in ‘Modi surname’ case
Guwahati: A Surat Court found Congress leader Rahul Gandhi guilty of criminal defamation in a case brought in 2019 and sentenced him to two years in jail on March 23 for comments he made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last name. However, the sentence was suspended for 30 days and the judge granted bail so that he could appeal the ruling.
Purnesh Modi, a BJP MLA and former Gujarat minister, filed the case against Rahul Gandhi for saying, “How come all thieves have the common surname Modi?”
The Wayanad Lok Sabha MP made the remarks at a rally in Kolar of Karnataka before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The fugitive businessmen Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi also share the last name Modi, which the MP used to allude to Prime Minister Modi.
He was welcomed by top Congress leaders in Gujarat when Rahul Gandhi arrived in Surat earlier in the day for the verdict.
Party members and Gandhi’s supporters gathered in different parts of the city as a show of force and support. On display were placards proclaiming that the “Congress will not bow before the dictatorship of the BJP” and posters praising Gandhi as “Sher-e-Hindustan” (Lion of India).
Last week, the court of Boss Legal Justice HH Varma concluded hearing the final arguments from the two parties and declared that it was prepared to express its decision in the four-year-old slander case, according to Gandhi’s counsel Kirit Panwala.
Gandhi had previously appeared in front of the Surat court in October 2021 in order to register his claim.
A BJP MLA named Purnesh Modi claimed in his lawsuit that when Gandhi spoke at the 2019 election rally, he disparaged the Modi community as a whole.
Purnesh Modi was a minister during the first term of the Bhupendra Patel administration. He once again won the Surat West Assembly seat in the elections that were conducted in December.