A court in India has found the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi guilty of defamation for a remark implying the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was a criminal.
On Thursday, Gandhi, 52, was sentenced to two years in prison but was granted bail after his lawyers announced their intention to appeal.
The case stemmed from a remark made during the 2019 election campaign in which Gandhi, the leading face of the Congress party, had asked why “all thieves have Modi as [their] common surname”.
Modi’s government has been widely accused of using the law to target and silence critics, and the case in his home state of Gujarat is one of several lodged against Gandhi in recent years.
Gandhi’s comments were seen as a slur against the prime minister, who went on to win the election in a landslide.
Members of the government said the remark was also a smear against all those people whose surname was Modi, which is associated with the lower rungs of India’s traditional caste hierarchy.
“If you are going to insult the entire Modi surname, this is completely defamatory,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, a lawmaker for the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), told reporters. “There was a proper hearing. He got an opportunity to present his side of things. The decision has been taken according to the due judicial process.”
Gandhi’s lawyer, BM Mangukiya, said his client had not meant to insult anyone. “When the magistrate asked Gandhi what he had to say in his defence, the Congress leader said he was fighting to expose corruption in the country,” Mangukiya told reporters outside the court. “His comments were not meant to hurt or insult any community.”
Gandhi is the son, grandson and great-grandson of a dynasty of former Indian prime ministers, beginning with the independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru. But he has struggled to challenge the electoral juggernaut of Modi and its nationalist appeals to the country’s Hindu majority.
Gandhi was greeted by supporters when he arrived at court for the verdict on Thursday. He faces at least two other defamation cases elsewhere in the country.
The Congress party leader, Manish Tiwari, who is also a supreme court lawyer and has argued for the country’s defamation laws to be decriminalised because they in effect restrict free speech, said he was surprised by the verdict.
“I have yet to see the judgment but two years is the maximum sentence possible and I would like to see why the court gave it. The remedy now lies with a higher court,” said Tiwari.
Apart from granting him bail, the court also suspended the sentence for one month to allow Gandhi to appeal. But according to Indian law, any MP stands instantly and automatically disqualified on receiving a two-year prison sentence. It’s not yet clear how Gandhi and the Congress Party will handle this.
The rival politician Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi party (Ordinary Man’s party) said he disagreed with the verdict. “A conspiracy is being hatched to eliminate non-BJP leaders and parties by prosecuting them. We have differences with the Congress, but it is not right to implicate Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case like this,” he tweeted.
Another Congress leader, Pawan Khera, agreed with this observation. “Attempts are being made to silence Rahul Gandhi because he is asking uncomfortable questions,” he said.
Some political analysts believe the court ruling will encourage the BJP to sharpen its attacks against Gandhi even further.
For the past week, BJP MPs have stalled the proceedings in parliament over their demand that Gandhi should apologise for saying during a talk at Cambridge University recently that democracy was under threat from the Modi government.
Two days ago, the BJP national spokesperson, Sambit Patra, dialled up the rhetoric, calling Gandhi “Mir Jafar”, an historical allusion meaning a traitor.
Gandhi is also on bail in a long-running money-laundering case. He denies any financial impropriety.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report