Rahul Gandhi gets two years in jail for defamation

The leader of India's Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, speaks at a public meeting on January 30, 2023 amid heavy snowfall, as he concludes the Bharat Jodo Yatra'' march in Srinagar. A court in India found opposition leader Rahul Gandhi guilty of defamation on Thursday for a speech he made in 2019 in which he referred to thieves as having the surname Modi, and sentenced him to two years in prison.

Gandhi, a senior leader of the Congress party and the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, will appeal the order in a higher court, his party said. The judgment was passed by a court in the city of Surat, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat.

An adviser to the federal government, Kanchan Gupta, said Gandhi, who is a member of the lower house of parliament, could face immediate disqualification as a member of parliament after a conviction in line with a 2013 order of the country's highest court.

The court has found Rahul Gandhi's comment to be defamatory, said Ketan Reshamwala, a advocate for complainant Purnesh Modi, a Gujarati legislator from the prime minister's Bharatiya Janata Party BJP He has been sentenced to two years in jail. Gandhi was present at the Surat court, which gave him bail immediately and suspended the sentence for a month.

In a speech ahead of the last general election in 2019, Gandhi referred to the prime minister and two fugitive Indian businessmen, all with the Modi surname, while talking about alleged high-level corruption in the country.

On Thursday, Gandhi told the court that he was not against any community.

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Gandhi's party said the case against him was brought by a cowardly and dictatorial BJP government because he was exposing their dark deeds. The Modi government is a victim of political bankruptcy Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. We will appeal to the higher court. Gupta, a senior adviser to the federal Ministry of Information Broadcasting, said that Gandhi faced immediate disqualification as a lawmaker.

In a democracy, nobody, absolutely nobody, is above the law, Gupta said on Twitter. All are equal. The law is equally applicable to Rahul Gandhi. Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said the party had all legal recourse available to us and they will use them Hopefully, the law of the land will prevail, she said.

One of the main rivals of Modi ahead of the 2024 general election, Gandhi won the support of the Aam Aadmi Party AAP that rules Delhi and two of its top leaders are in jail on what they call trumped-up charges.

A conspiracy is being hammered to eliminate non-BJP leaders and parties by prosecuting them, AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote on Twitter.

We have differences with the Congress, but it is not right to implicate Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case like this. It is the job of the public and the opposition to ask questions. We respect the decision but we don't agree with it. Gandhi's once-dominant Congress controls less than 10 percent of the elected seats in parliament's lower house, and lost badly to the BJP in the last two general elections.

Modi is expected to win a third term election in 2024, as India's most popular politician by a large margin.