Thane (Maharashtra): A magistrate’s court in Bhiwandi granted bail to Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who is accused in a defamation case, on Wednesday.
The next hearing in the case, filed by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist Rajesh Kunte for holding the organisation’s members responsible for Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in a speech in 2014, was fixed for January 28, 2017. Rahul had earlier expressed his readiness to face trial after the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the criminal proceedings pending against him before the trial court.
The Supreme Court had rapped the Gandhi scion in July 2016 for his remarks asking him to either apologise or face trial in the case. “If you won’t apologise, you will have to face trial,” the court said pulling up the Congress leader for his remarks.
“We have held it may be historically correct but the fact or the statement has to meet the test of public good. You can’t make collective denunciation,” a Bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and RF Nariman said.
The Bench said that “freedom is not crippled or curbed. What is curbed is freedom of speech. What the writers, politicians, critics or antagonists say, you must have great magnitude to swallow”.
Later, addressing a huge crowd of Congress activists in this Muslim-dominated powerloom town, Gandhi said he had come “to fight” an ideological war against the RSS.
Lashing out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi alleged that in the past one year, Modi had waived off over Rs 110,000 crore loans to a handful of 15 industrialists.
“Now, he has taken money from each citizens’ pocket to give it to these industrialists who are his friends. No action was taken against them. We demand action against Modi’s friends and those who have hoarded black money,” Gandhi said.
