Rahul Gandhi’s accuser in the defamation case, BJP MLA Purnesh Modi, has submitted a caveat to the Supreme Court asking to be heard if the Congressman files a motion to challenge the high court’s decision to uphold his conviction in the Modi surname comment case.
On July 7, a Gujarat High Court single-judge panel rejected Rahul Gandhi’s request for a stay of his defamation lawsuit conviction.
Purnesh Modi, through his attorney P S Sudheer, filed the proviso in the Supreme Court on the same day, according to the website of the court.
If any decision is made on an opponent’s appeal contesting the order or judgment of the court below, the plaintiff desiring an opportunity to be heard files a caveat in the appellate court.
Rahul Gandhi, 53, suffered a defeat when Justice Hemant Prachchhak of the high court rejected his plea, stating that “it is now the need of the hour to have purity in politics.”
It further stated that the people’s representatives should be “men of clear antecedent,” that a stay of execution is not a general rule but rather an exception used only in exceptional circumstances, and that there was no good basis to stay his conviction.
A stay on Rahul Gandhi’s conviction would have paved the way for his reinstatement as a Lok Sabha MP.
Later, the Congress announced that it will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court and claimed that the government is employing “newer techniques” to muzzle his voice since his telling the truth has alarmed it.
The question “How come all thieves have Modi as the common surname?” was posed by Rahul Gandhi on April 13, 2019, during an electoral rally in Kolar, Karnataka. Purnesh Modi, a former minister in the Gujarati government, had filed a criminal defamation action against Gandhi in 2019.
The former Congress president was found guilty on March 23 of violating Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 499 and 500 (criminal defamation) and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Rahul Gandhi, who was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2019 from the Keralan district of Wayanad, was later declared ineligible to serve as a member of parliament under the terms of the Representation of the People Act.
The order was subsequently contested by Rahul Gandhi before a Surat sessions court along with a request for a stay of the conviction. On April 20, the sessions court granted him bail but declined to postpone the conviction; as a result, he knocked on the high court’s doors.
