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Rahul Gandhi, the leader of India's Congress Party, has been sentenced to jail for his statement referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a "thief."
In a criminal defamation case, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Indian opposition, has been sentenced to two years in prison.
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The court in Gujarat state has convicted the Congress MP for his 2019 comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surname during an election rally. Rahul Gandhi was present in court during the sentencing but is currently out on bail for 30 days and plans to appeal the decision. The Congress Party claims that the government of Mr Modi is targeting their leader, with general elections scheduled for next year. A Congress spokesman denounced the ruling as containing legally unsupportable conclusions and asserted that their politicians would continue to speak fearlessly and openly about matters of public interest. The BJP party defended the verdict, stating that the legal process was followed in the case, which dates back to the previous election campaign.
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Nirav Modi is an Indian diamond tycoon who is currently a fugitive, whereas Lalit Modi is a former chief of the Indian Premier League who has been banned from the country's cricket board for life. According to Mr. Gandhi, his comment was intended to draw attention to corruption and was not directed at any particular community.
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A complaint by Purnesh Modi, a lawmaker from India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, led to the case being filed against Rahul Gandhi. Purnesh Modi claimed that Mr. Gandhi's remarks defamed the entire Modi community. However, some experts have expressed confusion about the verdict issued by the Surat court. Legal scholar Gautam Bhatia tweeted that references to a general group of people, such as surnames in this case, are not actionable unless a specific individual can prove that they were directly referred to.
According to Mr. Bhatia, "If someone makes a statement such as 'all lawyers are thieves', as a lawyer, I cannot sue them for defamation unless I can demonstrate that the comment was directed at me.
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According to Kirit Panwala, Mr. Gandhi's lawyer, their defense rested on four points: firstly, Mr. Gandhi is not a resident of Gujarat, so an inquiry should be conducted before the complaint is made. Secondly, there is no community that goes by the name Modi. Thirdly, there is no group of people who identify by the surname Modi, and finally, Mr. Gandhi's statement was not made with malicious intent.
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India's criminal defamation law is a holdover from the British era, which carries a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment, a fine, or both. Advocates of free speech have often contended that the law violates the principles of freedom and is used by politicians to stifle their opponents.
In 2016, several prominent Indian politicians, including Mr. Gandhi, filed legal petitions seeking to decriminalize defamation. Nevertheless, India's Supreme Court upheld the legality of the law, stating that "the right to free speech cannot be interpreted to mean that an individual can defame others."
Mr. Gandhi's conviction has raised questions about his status as a Member of Parliament.
In India, defamation alone cannot serve as a basis for disqualification. An MP can only be disqualified if they are found guilty of offenses such as promoting enmity, committing election-related fraud, or are sentenced to two or more years in prison for an offense.
A two-year prison sentence would render Mr. Gandhi ineligible to contest the 2024 general election.
A political commentator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, suggests that Mr. Gandhi's legal team may appeal to the Supreme Court, which could stay the verdict. However, the commentator questions whether the ruling implies that a sword of Damocles is hanging over any leader, given that cases are filed against politicians for all sorts of alleged crimes, but little typically comes of them.
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RAHUL GANDHI
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Mr. Rahul Gandhi is a prominent Indian politician belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has produced three prime ministers for India. His great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first and longest-serving prime minister of the country, followed by his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, the first female prime minister, and his father, Rajiv Gandhi, the youngest prime minister of India. The Indian National Congress, which is their party, ruled the country almost continuously since independence in 1947, except for a few years, until the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi swept to power in 2014. Since then, Congress has lost its dominance in Indian politics and faced a crushing defeat again in the 2019 general elections. In the history of India, only one opposition leader has been jailed before Mr. Gandhi, which was in December 1978, when Indira Gandhi, no longer prime minister, was expelled from the lower house and imprisoned for nine days for committing a breach of privilege and contempt of parliament.
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