Supreme Court Puts Hold on Defamation Case Against Rahul Gandhi Over Remarks About Amit Shah
The court has issued notices to the state and complainant Navin Jha in response to Rahul Gandhi’s petition challenging the February 2024 ruling by the Jharkhand High Court.
Image Source: Free Press Journal
The Supreme Court on Monday halted proceedings against Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case pending in a Jharkhand court over his alleged “murder” remark about Union Home Minister Amit Shah in 2018. The court issued notices to the state government and the complainant, Navin Jha, seeking their responses to Gandhi’s petition challenging a February 2024 Jharkhand High Court order that refused to quash the trial court’s summons against him.
Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the Congress MP, argued that the complaint was filed by a third party, which is not legally permissible under defamation law. “If you are not the aggrieved person, how can there be a proxy filing of the complaint?” Singhvi asked, as quoted by Bar and Bench.
The controversy stems from Gandhi’s alleged reference to Shah as a “murderer” during a public speech in Chaibasa ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In 2019, BJP worker Navin Jha filed a defamation case against Gandhi over the remarks. A Judicial Commissioner in Ranchi overturned a magistrate court’s initial dismissal of Jha’s complaint and directed the magistrate to review the case based on available evidence and issue new orders.
In November 2018, the magistrate court found sufficient grounds to proceed under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and issued fresh summons for Gandhi’s appearance. The Congress leader challenged this decision in the Jharkhand High Court, but a single bench dismissed his plea, stating that the remarks were “prima facie defamatory.”
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