From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: Supreme Court senior lawyer R S Cheema on Thursday told Surat’s additional sessions judge R P Mogera that Rahul Gandhi’s remarks on Modi surname were not at all defamatory and no need for maximum punishment of two years by a magistrate, seeking a stay on his conviction.
The judge reserved the verdict on plea to stay the conviction, fixing the order a week later on April 20.
Gujaarat BJP MLA and complainant Purnesh Modi, however, opposed the stay on conviction, asserting that Rahul was a “repetitive offender” in the habit of making defamatory statements.
Cheema asserted that the trial was unfair and the magistrate made “a strange hotchpotch of all the evidence on record as the entire case was based on the electronic evidence in the speech made during elections and a person sitting 100 km away filed the complaint.”
Lawyer Harshit Toliya told the court that his client Purnesh Modi felt offended because Rahul had tried to defame all people with Modi surname.
“In his speech, Rahul Gandhi spoke about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But he didn’t stop there and went beyond it. He then said “Saare choron ke naam Modihi kyu hai? Dhoondho aur bhi Modi milenge (Why are all thieves have Modi surname? If you search, you will find more such Modis). My client was hurt by this part of the speech and thus the complaint,” Toliya added.
He said Rahul is facing similar defamation cases in the country and even refusing to apologise. On Cheema challenging jurisdiction as Rahul’s speech was in far away Karnataka, Toliya said this was not raised earlier.
In his appeal, Rahul has termed his conviction as erroneous and patently perverse.
Reading out from the magistrate’s detailed judgment, Toliya justified correctness of the ruling, asserting that there is nothing special in the order that should shock the conscience of the court.
Senior advocate Cheema said the law requires one to bring on record the source of the speech, but the petitioner did not do so. He said the complainant received a WhatsApp message. He lives in Surat while the speech was made in Kolar, so juridiction is questionable.
“Suppose some ghost sends me a message and I receive it while at my home in Chandigarh. Can I invoke jurisdiction of a court in Chandigarh,” Cheema asked.
Sr Adv Cheema: There is one Sankat Mochan in this matter. He suddenly became an eyewitness for the complainant after 2 years of filing of the case.
He exaggerated the speech. We told him that you are exaggerating but he said no, the material (speech copy) made available is less whatever he has testified was the content of the speech.
Sr Adv Cheema: There is one Sankat Mochan in this matter. He suddenly became an eyewitness for the complainant after 2 years of filing of the case.
He exaggerated the speech. We told him that you are exaggerating but he said no, the material (speech copy) made available is less whatever he has testified was the content of the speech.
Referring to the magistrate accepting the complainant’s testimony and his witnesses that there were 13 crore Modis across India, Cheema said it is mind boggling to accept “collection of persons” and by the way Gujarat’s population was nearly 6 crore in 2011.
Sr Adv Cheema: There is one Sankat Mochan in this matter. He suddenly became an eyewitness for the complainant after 2 years of filing of the case.
He exaggerated the speech. We told him that you are exaggerating but he said no, the material (speech copy) made available is less whatever he has testified was the content of the speech.
The speech was made before the apology to the Supreme Court. So how can they interpret it and say I didn’t learnt from the proceedings in the top court ?
