Rahul Gandhi Acquitted in 2018 Defamation Case Over ‘Murder Accused’ Remark on Amit Shah

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was acquitted by a special MP-MLA court in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur on Monday in a criminal defamation case over his 2018 remarks referring to Amit Shah, then BJP president, as a “murder accused”.

The case originated during the 2018 Karnataka Assembly election campaign, when Gandhi made the remarks at a press conference in Bengaluru on May 8. Criticising the BJP’s claims of clean politics, he said, “People in India forget that the president of BJP is a murder accused. That's the truth. The party that talks about honesty, decency, has a person who has been accused of murder as president of the BJP.”

Gandhi was referring to the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case, involving the alleged extrajudicial killing of Sheikh, his wife Kausar Bi and his associate Tulsiram Prajapati. Shah, who was Gujarat’s Minister of State for Home at the time, had been named an accused in the case. However, a special CBI court discharged Shah in 2014, citing a lack of grounds to proceed against him.

Following Gandhi’s remarks, local BJP leader Vijay Mishra, a former chairman of the Sultanpur District Cooperative Bank, filed a criminal defamation complaint on August 4, 2018, alleging that the comments were objectionable and damaged Shah’s reputation.

The Sultanpur court ruled on Monday that Gandhi’s remarks were not defamatory and that Mishra was not an aggrieved person in the matter. Gandhi appeared in person for the verdict, bringing the trial proceedings to a close.

The court had initially scheduled the verdict for October 13 before postponing it to October 26. Congress workers gathered outside the court celebrated the acquittal by distributing sweets and beating drums.

Mishra’s side indicated that it would examine the judgment before deciding whether to challenge it in a higher court.