Allahabad HC refuses to quash Rahul Gandhi's summons in VD Savarkar case

Rahul Gandhi moved the High Court against a lower court's December summons and also challenged a Sessions Court order allowing advocate Nripendra Pandey's revision plea over his dismissed complaint

The Allahabad High Court on Friday refused to grant relief to Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi in the VD Savarkar defamation case, which is currently before an Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Lucknow, LiveLaw reported.

 

Gandhi had approached the High Court challenging a lower court’s order summoning him as an accused in December last year. Additionally, he contested a Sessions Court ruling that had allowed a revision plea filed by Advocate Nripendra Pandey. This revision plea challenged the earlier dismissal of Pandey’s complaint in June 2023.

 

During the hearing, Justice Subhash Vidyarthi orally mentioned that Gandhi has the option to seek relief before the Sessions Judge under Section 397 CrPC (Section 438 BNSS). In light of this, the High Court disposed of the petition.  

 

The Congress leader was summoned in December after the court found that his speech and the distribution of pamphlets before a press conference had spread hatred and ill will in society. In the press conference, he said that Savarkar was a servant of the British and received a pension from them, LiveLaw reported.

 

“Distributing previously printed pamphlets and leaflets at press conferences demonstrates that Rahul Gandhi had weakened and insulted the basic characteristics of the nation by spreading hatred and enmity in the society,” Additional Civil Judge Lucknow, Alok Verma had said in his December order.  

 

The order was issued in response to a complaint filed by Advocate Pandey, who alleged that Gandhi sought to incite hatred by referring to nationalist leader Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as a servant of the British and stating that he received a pension from them.  

 

“Kantiveer Damodar, the great leader of the nationalist ideology, was a fearless freedom fighter in the history of independence, who endured the inhuman atrocities of the British to free Mother India from their slavery, and Gandhi insulted Savarkar ji using indecent words and made hateful utterances to spread inferiority complex towards Savarkar ji...,” the petition said.