New Delhi: Dismissing the case of criminal defamation against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, a MP/MLA court held that the complainant failed to establish his legal right to prosecute the case or demonstrate how the statement damaged his reputation.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Shubham Verma found that the remarks were directed primarily at Amit Shah and, at most, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).BJP office-bearer Vijay Mishra, the complainant, had not established that the alleged imputation referred to him personally, the court said Monday.
The magistrate also questioned the credibility of the account presented by Mishra and his witnesses, noting inconsistencies in their testimony about the circumstances in which they watched the video containing Rahul’s remarks.
The complaint was filed on 4 August 2018 under Sections 499 and 500 of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code (IPC), which define criminal defamation and prescribe its punishment. Gandhi had denied the allegations.
Failure to establish legal standing
The case arose from remarks Rahul made at a press conference in Bengaluru on 8 May 2018, during the Karnataka election campaign. Referring to Shah, he had said: “People in India forget that the president of BJP is a murder accused. That’s the truth.”
The remarks concerned the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, in which Shah was discharged by a special court in 2014.
Mishra alleged that the statement damaged his reputation because of association with Shah and the BJP. He claimed that two people showed him a video of the press conference and that the remarks led to humiliation because of his political affiliation.
But, the court found that the statement did not name Mishra or contain any direct or indirect imputation against him.
In its judgment, the court noted that although Mishra claimed his reputation was inseparable from that of Shah and the BJP, neither he nor his witnesses substantiated this assertion during their testimony. Mishra had also not produced independent members of the public to establish that the remarks had lowered his reputation.
Mishra, it noted, had not established that the BJP authorised him to file the complaint on the party’s behalf. His claimed position as a district vice-president did not, by itself, confer such authority, it added.
“We can’t allow every party office-bearer or member to initiate separate criminal proceedings over the same statement, leading to multiple complaints.”
Section 199 of the erstwhile Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) generally requires a criminal defamation complaint to be filed by a person aggrieved by the alleged offence, subject to specified exceptions.
The court held that Mishra failed to establish that he qualified as an aggrieved person in the case.
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Contradictions in witnesses’ accounts
The court also examined the evidence concerning the incident in which Mishra claimed he was shown the video.
Mishra claimed that Dinesh Kumar and Aniruddh Shukla showed him the recording, while Anil Kumar Mishra and Ram Chandra Dubey were also present.
However, the court found inconsistencies in the witnesses’ accounts of how they reached Mishra’s residence.
Anil Kumar Mishra stated that he met Dubey at Loharamau around 10.30 am and that they travelled separately to Mishra’s house.
Dubey gave a different account, stating that he met Anil at the BJP office in Sultanpur, where a meeting was held before they travelled together on a motorcycle to Mishra’s residence.
The court considered these differences material to the complainant’s account of the incident. It also noted that Mishra and his witnesses were BJP members, adding that the complainant had not examined independent witnesses to establish that the statement adversely affected his standing among the public.
The court observed that the other people who allegedly watched the video had not claimed that they felt humiliated.
It concluded that the evidence did not establish that the statement lowered Mishra’s moral or intellectual character in the estimation of others, as required under the fourth explanation to Section 499 of the erstwhile IPC.
Political speech & criminal defamation
The court also considered the constitutional context of the remarks, referring to the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a).
Relying on the Supreme Court’s observations in Arvind Kejriwal v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2024) and S. Khushboo v. Kanniammal (2010), the court said criminal defamation complaints arising from public discourse between political personalities and parties must meet a higher threshold.
It held that Rahul’s remarks did not satisfy that threshold in the circumstances of the case.
The court also found the complaint’s account of the alleged humiliation insufficiently substantiated, observing that the circumstances appeared suspicious and could indicate political or other motives.
Aditya Edara is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint.