Rahul Gandhi Acquitted in Sultanpur Defamation Case Over Shah Remark

A special MP-MLA court in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, acquitted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday in a criminal defamation case over remarks he made about Amit Shah during the 2018 Karnataka election campaign. Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, was in the courtroom when the verdict was pronounced, Reuters reported.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Shubham Verma held that Gandhi's remarks were not defamatory in nature, LawBeat and LawTrend reported. The plaintiff's lawyer, Santosh Pandey, confirmed the acquittal to reporters, The Hindu BusinessLine reported.

An eight year old case ends

The complaint was filed on August 4, 2018 by Vijay Mishra, a local BJP leader and former chairman of the Sultanpur District Cooperative Bank. It was brought under Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code. Mishra objected to remarks Gandhi made at a campaign event in Bengaluru ahead of the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections, where Gandhi said the BJP spoke about honesty and decency while its president had been accused of murder.

The remarks pointed to Shah, who was BJP president at the time. Shah had been an accused in the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case and was discharged by a special CBI court in 2014, four years before Gandhi's speech. Gandhi's side maintained that his remarks had been presented out of context.

Gandhi appeared before the Sultanpur court in February 2024 and was granted bail. The court had first fixed October 13 to pronounce the verdict, and then set October 26, The Hindu BusinessLine reported. Security around the court complex was tightened for the hearing, and Congress workers celebrated outside with drums after the order, the paper said. Congress MLC Deepak Singh welcomed the verdict and said the truth had prevailed.

Why the verdict matters now

Reuters noted that the acquittal lands while Gandhi is leading a united opposition campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chief Election Commissioner over a contested revision of voter lists. It is also the second defamation fight of Gandhi's career to reach a verdict. In 2023 a Gujarat court convicted him in a separate case over a remark about the Modi surname, a conviction that briefly cost him his seat in Parliament before it was stayed on appeal.

With Monday's acquittal, the Sultanpur case is closed after more than eight years, unless the complainant appeals.