Sultanpur court acquits Rahul Gandhi in the 2018 defamation case over his remarks on Amit Shah

A sentence spoken at an election rally eight years ago reached its end in a Sultanpur courtroom on 26 October. The special MP-MLA court acquitted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the criminal defamation case over his remarks about Amit Shah. Gandhi was in court when the verdict was read out.

The case goes back to the 2018 Karnataka Assembly campaign. At a rally in Bengaluru, Gandhi referred to Amit Shah, then the BJP’s national president, as a murder accused. Vijay Mishra, a BJP politician in Sultanpur and former chairman of the district cooperative bank, filed a complaint on 4 August 2018 saying the words had defamed Shah. The case ran for eight years, with Gandhi appearing before the court and securing bail along the way.

What the court held

After arguments closed, the court fixed 13 October for its judgment and then moved it to 26 October. On that day it held that the remarks did not amount to defamation and acquitted him. “We respectfully accept the court’s decision, and the truth has ultimately prevailed,” said Kashi Prasad Shukla, Gandhi’s counsel. Whether the complainant will appeal is not yet known.

It is one of several defamation cases Gandhi has faced. In 2023 a Surat court sentenced him to two years in the “Modi surname” case. He lost his Lok Sabha seat and returned after the Supreme Court stayed the conviction. The Sultanpur case has ended in his favour. On the same day, the BJP held protests across the country over Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s remark about the Prime Minister’s father.