- Says ten criminal cases are pending against him and that representatives of the people must have clear antecedents
New Delhi, July 7.
The Gujarat High Court on Friday refused to stay Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in a defamation case over his remarks that all thieves bore the Modi surname.
As many as ten criminal cases were pending against the “accused” in the case, the single judge said referring to Rahul Gandhi. “It is now need of the hour to have purity in politics. Representatives of people should be man of clear antecedent,” the High Court said.
It appears from the record that after filing of the complaint, more complaints have been filed against the “accused”, out of which, one complaint was filed by the grandson of Vir Sawarkar in Pune over defamatory utterances against Sawarkar at Cambridge, the court recorded.
A Surat court had on March 23, 2023, convicted him and sentenced him to two years in jail leading to his immediate disqualification as a member of Parliament from the Lok Sabha.
All thieves seem to have the Modi surname, Gandhi had said in an election rally. After his conviction, which will not allow him to contest in elections for eight years unless the courts stay both his conviction and sentence, he filed a criminal revision application in the High Court.
That application was dismissed today by single judge Hemant M. Prachchhak.
“… there is no reasonable ground to stay the conviction of the applicant in the facts and circumstances of the case. The impugned order passed by the appellate court is just, proper and legal and do not call for any interference,” the court said.
Gandhi is a senior leader of the oldest political party in India with a large presence and a prominent figure in the realm of the Indian political landscape, the court said. This ensures that every utterance of the petitioner automatically gets large scale publicity, it said.
In the modern electronic media environment, this large-scale publicity is lightning quick, difficult to contain and leaves a permanent imprint in the form of website links, videos, etc, it said.
The petitioner is assumed to be aware of the same and being a public personality is vested with the duty to exercise this vast power at his disposal with caution ensuring that dignity and reputation of a large number of persons or any identifiable class is not jeopardised due to his political activities or utterances, the High Court said.
These following additional countervailing factors operate against the petitioner which increase the seriousness of the offence, it said.
“It is a well-settled principle of law that stay of conviction is not a rule but an exception to be resorted to in rare cases. Disqualification is not limited only to MPs/MLAs.”
Among other things, the court said that reputation was an important facet of a person’s personality. It said that the conviction in this case was just not against one person but a large segment of the society – an identifiable class.
Defamation is not to be ignored as a mere trivial offence as has been sought to be suggested rather it must be examined from the point of view of mischief that the provision seeks to control, it said.
“In the backdrop of the said circumstances, refusal to stay the conviction would not, in any way, result in injustice to the applicant.”
Gandhi’s lawyers, led by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, argued that it was not a serious offence or of moral turpitude and that there was no identifiable class of persons who can claim that they were defamed.
His lawyers argued that the complainant was not aggrieved person. Besides, serious factors had vitiated his trial as no documentary evidence was presented to the court. Should the conviction and sentence not be stayed it would cause him irreparable damage, his lawyers added.
Multiple defamation cases have been filed against Rahul Gandhi throughout the country by BJP leaders and other right-wing parties over his strident remarks against the ruling party and its affiliates. The Surat complaint has also been filed by BJP leader Purnesh Ishwerbhai Modi.
