New Delhi: Without ‘stay’ on the sentence by the Surat court itself, Congress MP and former president of the grand old party, Rahul Gandhi, could have been behind bars.
Well, the verdict of the Surat court is never in isolation.
Rahul Gandhi is already out on bail in the famous ‘National Herald case’ pursued by BJP leader Dr Subramanian Swamy. In this case, Rahul Gandhi and also his mother, Sonia Gandhi, were granted bail in December 2015 on a personal bond of Rs 50,000. On March 23, Dr Swamy claimed the National Herald would come up for a crucial round of hearings in April and that Rahul could be facing much bigger troubles.
Sources said there are six other cases in which Rahul Gandhi is out on bail.
On July 6, 2019, Rahul Gandhi was granted bail by a Patna court in another defamation case related to the same row as in the Surat court case. This case was filed by a BJP leader for Rahul’s comments saying “all Modis are thieves”. There is a Modi community in Bihar too.
On July 12, 2019, Rahul Gandhi was granted bail by an Ahmedabad court in another defamation case. The case was filed by the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank after he had alleged that the bank was involved in a scam of swapping bank notes during demonetisation in 2016.
The Guwahati court has also granted him bail in another defamation case filed by the RSS. The bail was granted on a bond of Rs 50,000 in September 2016. The case was filed after Rahul had been misled that he was ‘prevented’ by the RSS from entering the Barpeta Satra in Assam in December 2015.
On July 4, 2019, Rahul was granted bail by a Mumbai court in a defamation case filed by a RSS worker. This case was filed for his remark linking activist Gauri Lankesh’s killing with the “BJP-RSS ideology”. The bail was granted on a surety amount of Rs 15,000.
In November 2016, the Bhiwandi court in Maharashtra granted bail to the Congress leader in a case filed by another RSS worker. This case is linked to Rahul Gandhi’s absurd claims that the RSS had killed Mahatma Gandhi. Even the Supreme Court had slammed him for such ‘collective’ comments and had ruled that he would have to face trial and prove his point in the court.
The moral of the lesson being Rahul Gandhi has developed a habit of making unfounded allegations against organisations such as RSS and other nationalist leaders and communities.
In relation to the Surat court order, Dr Swamy has said, “I have not seen the entire court order. But hate speech against a community is a serious offence”.
He also said, “The Congress party and Rahul Gandhi cannot escape from this; they can only try to buy time”.
