On April 20, a sessions court in Surat rejected his request to have his conviction and the two-year prison sentence imposed by a magistrate court suspended.
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, filed a petition with the Gujarat High Court on Tuesday asking for a stay of the Magistrate court’s decision to find him guilty of criminal defamation in the case of Rahul Gandhi vs. Purnesh Modi.
Tarannum Cheema, Gandhi’s attorney, confirmed the development. She claimed that on Tuesday night, the High Court received the appeal. In due course, a bench of one judge would hear his appeal.
On April 20, a sessions court in Surat rejected his request for the Magistrate court to suspend his conviction.
Gandhi was denied interim relief after the sessions court determined in a thorough order that his disqualification would not amount to an irreparable or irreversible loss for him.
The now-disqualified Wayanad, Kerala, lawmaker was found guilty on March 23 by a magistrate court for his contentious remark, “All thieves have Modi surname.”
Gandhi had connected Prime Minister Narendra Modi with wanted criminals like Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi during a political campaign in Kolar, Karnataka, in 2019.
He’d stated,
Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, and Narendra Modi. Why is ‘Modi’ such a common surname among thieves?
A former BJP member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Purnesh Modi, objected to the speech, saying Gandhi had humiliated and defamed people with the surname Modi.
The Surat magistrate court agreed with Modi’s claim that Gandhi had purposefully insulted people with the surname “Modi” in his speech.
Gandhi is a Member of Parliament (MP), so whatever he says will have a greater impact, the judge wrote in his 168-page decision. He ought to have used restraint as a result.
The judge ruled that the defendants “had taken the reference of the last name of the current Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, to satisfy his political greed, and insulted and defamed 13 crore people living in the entire India having the surname ‘Modi’.”
The sessions judge’s refusal to maintain the status quo resulted in the current High Court petition.
.Written By- Tushar Vashisth students of 3rd year BBA LLB at Chandigarh University
