Rahul Gandhi condemned to prison for calling Modi “thieves”

• Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was sentenced to two years in prison.
• Mr Gandhi was found guilty by a Gujarat court in 2019.
• He will not go to jail right away because he was given bail for 30 days.

In a criminal defamation lawsuit, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was sentenced to two years in prison.

Mr Gandhi was found guilty by a Gujarat court in 2019 for remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surname during an election rally.

He will not go to jail right away because he was given bail for 30 days and will appeal his verdict.

The Congress party MP was present in court for the sentence, which took place a year before the general election.

Mr Gandhi asked during an election rally in Karnataka state in April 2019, before of the previous general election: “Why do all of these thieves have the surname Modi? Narendra Modi, Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi.”

Nirav Modi is a wanted Indian diamond tycoon, whereas Lalit Modi is a former Indian Premier League commissioner who was banned for life by the country’s cricket body. Mr Gandhi claimed that he made the remark to highlight corruption and that it was not intended at any particular community.

Purnesh Modi, a politician from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, launched the action against him, claiming that Mr Gandhi’s words had defamed the whole Modi community.

Nonetheless, some people are perplexed by the sequence.

Legal scholar Gautam Bhatia tweeted that “references to a generic class of persons” – surnames in this case – are not “actionable unless an individual can show a direct reference to themselves”.

“If a man says ‘all lawyers are thieves’, then I, as a lawyer, cannot file a case against him for defamation unless I can show its imputation aimed at me,” Mr Bhatia said.

The criminal defamation law in India is British-era legislation, with a maximum jail penalty of two years, a fine, or both.

Free speech activists have frequently complained that the law violates free speech principles and is utilised by governments to muzzle their opponents.

In 2016, several prominent Indian politicians, including Mr Gandhi, filed court petitions calling for defamation to be decriminalised. Nonetheless, India’s Supreme Court affirmed the law’s legality, stating that the “right to free speech cannot mean that a citizen can defame the other.”

The Congress party tweeted that Mr Gandhi would appeal and said “we will fight and win”.

Mr Gandhi has not commented publicly yet but has tweeted a quote in Hindi from India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi: “My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God, and non-violence the means to get it.”

According to his counsel, Kirit Panwala, Mr Gandhi told the judge after the ruling that he delivered the statement “in favour of democracy.”

He also said that their defence of Mr Gandhi was based on four points: “Firstly, Mr Gandhi is not a resident of Gujarat and so, before the complaint, an inquiry should be conducted. Secondly, there is no community named Modi. Thirdly, there is no association of people with Modi as their surname and lastly, there was no ill intention behind Mr Gandhi’s speech.”

After the conviction, some have questioned Mr Gandhi’s standing as a member of parliament.

In India, defamation cannot be used to disqualify someone. An MP can be removed from office for offences ranging from inciting hatred to election-related fraud. They can, however, be disqualified if they are sentenced to two years or more in prison for an offence.

Mr Gandhi is a descendant of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, which has provided India three prime ministers. Jawaharlal Nehru, his great-grandfather, was India’s first and longest-serving prime minister. His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, was the country’s first female prime minister, and his father, Rajiv Gandhi, was the country’s youngest prime minister.

Their party, the Congress, controlled India virtually constantly – with the exception of a few years – from independence in 1947 until 2014, when Narendra Modi’s BJP won a resounding victory. Since then, the Congress has deteriorated into a ghost of its former self, and it was defeated once more by the BJP in the 2019 general election.

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