Mumbai: A metropolitan magistrate’s court has issued summons to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury after a defamation complaint was filed by an RSS worker for allegedly linking journalist Gauri Lankesh’s murder with “BJP-RSS ideology”.
RSS worker and lawyer Dhrutiman Joshi had filed a private complaint in the court in 2017 against Rahul Gandhi, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the CPI(M) and its general secretary Yechury. Magistrate P K Deshpande on Feb 18 ordered that “process be issued” against Rahul Gandhi and Yechury.
He, however, dismissed the complaint against Sonia Gandhi and the CPI(M), saying a party cannot be held liable for comments made by individuals. The matter was set for further hearing on March 25. Lankesh was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru in Sept 2017, allegedly by the members of a right-wing extremist group.
Joshi alleged that within 24 hours of Lankesh’s death, Rahul Gandhi told mediapersons that “anybody who speaks against the ideology of the BJP, against the ideology of the RSS is pressured, beaten, attacked, even killed”.
