UP special court grants bail to Rahul Gandhi

A special court on Tuesday, 20 February, granted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi bail in a defamation case filed by BJP leader Vijay Mishra for his remarks against Union home minister Amit Shah in 2018.

His lawyer said the court took him into custody for 30–45 minutes before that.

Gandhi, who could not attend the last hearing in the special MP-MLA court on 18 January as he was busy with his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, appeared in court on Tuesday. He was granted bail by Judge Yogesh Yadav after filling out bail bonds, said his counsel, Kashi Prasad Shukla. Gandhi also filed a personal bond of Rs 25,000 per the court directive.

BJP leader Vijay Mishra filed the case on 4 August 2018 over Gandhi's allegedly objectionable comments against Shah at a press conference in Bengaluru on 8 May 2018, during the Karnataka elections. Gandhi allegedly attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and said that the party claimed to support "honest and clean" politics but had a party president who was an "accused" in a murder case.

Advocate Santosh Pandey, for the BJP litigant, said, “He (Rahul Gandhi) surrendered in the court today. Rahul Gandhi’s advocate claimed that he was innocent and he has not said anything (defamatory). We objected to that. His offence — under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code (punishment for defamation) — is bailable, so he was granted bail.”

Pandey claimed that Gandhi could be given a maximum punishment of 2 years if sufficient evidence was found against him.

The complainant, Mishra, said he was vice president of the BJP when the incident occurred. “I felt very pained because I am a 33-year-old worker of the party. I filed a complaint regarding this through my lawyer and this continued for almost five years. The BJP is the biggest party of the country. Calling its (then) president a murderer is unjustifiable,” he reportedly said.

About four years before Gandhi's remark, a special CBI court in Mumbai discharged Shah in a 2005 fake encounter case when he was a minister of state for home in Gujarat.