Mumbai: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has a legitimate right to get a 2014 defamation complaint filed against him, for his alleged remarks against the RSS, to be decided on merits expeditiously, the Bombay High Court has said.
The court noted that Article 21 (protection of life and personal liberty) of the Constitution of India provides the right to a speedy trial for everyone and that a free and fair trial was something that is absolutely necessary.
The HC allowed a plea by Gandhi which sought to quash a magistrate’s order permitting an RSS worker, Rajesh Kunte, to submit fresh and additional documents in the pending criminal defamation complaint. Gandhi challenged this before the HC. The HC questioned Kunte and said due to his overall conduct the matter is being “unnecessarily delayed and protracted”.
“The respondent No 2 (Kunte) is leaving no stone unturned to thwart the legitimate right of the petitioner (Gandhi) to get the complaint decided on merits as expeditiously as possible in view of Article 21 of the Constitution of India which provides speedy trial,” Justice Prithviraj Chavan said on Monday. The detailed order copy was made available on Tuesday.
The judge added: “It is difficult to abstruse the conduct of the complainant. Free and fair trial is a sine qua non (a thing that is absolutely necessary) of Article 21 of the Constitution of India. It s trite law that justice should not only be done but it should be seen to have been done.”
The magistrate appears to have completely disregarded the cardinal principle of criminal jurisprudence while permitting Kunte to rely on the documents as evidence, the judge added.
Further, the high court noted that the copy of the transcript of the alleged speech was annexed to the petition only for the limited purpose of hearing of that petition as per HC rules. “Obviously, the annexures… can by no stretch of imagination be construed as an admission on behalf of the petitioner (Gandhi) in respect of the contents therein,” Justice Chavan underlined.
While quashing the order, the HC directed the magistrate to decide and dispose of the complaint expeditiously as it has been pending since a decade.
Kunte filed a complaint in 2014 before Bhiwandi magistrate claiming the Congress leader had made false and defamatory statements during a speech that the right-wing outfit was responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The magistrate, in 2023, permitted Kunte to submit the transcript of Gandhi's speech, which was part of Congress leader’s petition seeking the quashing of summons issued to him.
Kunte contended that by including the transcript as part of his petition, Gandhi had "unambiguously owned up to the speech and its contents".
