The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: A court at Patna in Bihar has allowed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to appear at a later date in a defamation case filed against him by Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Modi. In Surat, a court heard a complainant’s claim that Gandhi is attempting to browbeat the court by bringing in senior party leaders.
The Patna defamation case was filed against the same comment of Gandhi’s, made before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, at Kolar in Karnataka, over which a court at Surat in Gujarat convicted him to two years in jail. “Why do all the thieves, be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi or Narendra Modi, have ‘Modi’ in their names?” Gandhi had said.
The Surat conviction has led to Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha, where he represents Wayanad.
Patna
Gandhi had been granted bail in the Patna defamation case on July 6, 2019.
On April 12, Gandhi had failed to appear in Patna, following which the ACJM-cum-Special-Judge of the MP/MLA Court, Adi Dev, allowed him to appear on April 25. Gandhi’s advocate Ansul Kumar told the court that he could not appear due to prior commitments, LiveLaw has reported.
Meanwhile, Sushil Modi’s counsel moved an application for an arrest warrant to be issued against Gandhi for his failure to appear in court.
The LiveLaw report noted that Modi had lined up several high profile witnesses to appear for him in court. Among those who have deposed are former Bihar road construction minister Nitin Nabin, BJP’s Bihar youth wing president Manish Kumar, senior advocates S.D. Sanjay and Subodh Jha, and advocates Arjun Kumar and Ratnesh Kumar.
Surat
Meanwhile, Purnesh Modi, the complainant in the defamation case heard by the Surat court told the court on the same day that Gandhi was “attempting to pressurise the court by bringing state and national level party leaders to file an appeal against his conviction,” Bar and Bench has reported.
As The Wire had noted in an earlier report, on April 3, several senior Congress leaders including K.C. Venugopal, Ashok Gehlot, Digvijaya Singh and Anand Sharma had accompanied Gandhi to the court on the day when Gandhi’s sentence was suspended.
Purnesh Modi has alleged to the court that Gandhi’s conduct has been “extraordinarily arrogant.”
“Gandhi is guilty of making unfair and contemptuous comments through his aides, associates, leaders of his party and other at his behest, against the Court. His party leaders were present in large numbers in the court premises when the verdict was pronounced. They even made several unfair statements,” Modi said, according to Bar and Bench.
The Surat court is likely to hear Gandhi’s appeal today, April 13.