Gauhati High Court dismisses lower court order against Rahul Gandhi in defamation case

Guwahati: In a relief to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the Gauhati High Court has quashed a lower court order allowing additional witnesses against the Lok Sabha MP in a nine-year-old criminal defamation case filed by one RSS worker.

Issuing an order in a criminal revision petition, a single judge bench of Arun Dev Choudhury on Monday set aside the order by the additional sessions judge of Kamrup Metropolitan allowing more witnesses in the defamation case, which was being heard in a trial court.

In a criminal defamation petition by RSS worker Anjan Kumar Bora, the trial court magistrate, in March 2023, disallowed the listing of three additional witnesses after completion of the process with the recording of statements from six witnesses.

Bora had challenged this, and the additional sessions judge of Kamrup Metropolitan had, in September, allowed admission of the new witnesses against Gandhi.

The leader of the opposition, represented by Senior Advocate Angshuman Bora, challenged this order in the Gauhati High Court in July 2024.

After a series of hearings, the court dismissed the additional sessions judge's order and asked the trial court to dispose of the case expeditiously.

"...in the considered opinion of the court, in the present case, the application filed before the magistrate was wholly vague and bereft of particulars. Therefore, the magistrate had rightly declined the prayer," Justice Choudhury said in his order.

The revisional court, however, without taking note of the absence of any substantive ground or recording any finding of the necessity of such witnesses, "mechanically interfered with the reasoned order of the magistrate", he added.

"The revisional power is limited to correcting jurisdictional or procedural error, and it does not empower the session court to substitute its own discretion for that of the magistrate in the absence of any manifest illegality.

"The learned additional sessions judge did not consider that the foundation was not laid in the petition seeking the summoning of the witnesses, even to arrive at the satisfaction required," the HC order noted.

It further said that the additional sessions judge "ignored the settled proposition of law as discussed and recorded during the case", while allowing the revision petition by reversing the order of the magistrate.

"Such is an arbitrary exercise of discretion, resulting in patent illegality, which cannot be allowed to stand. Accordingly, the impugned order dated 22.09.2023 passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge No. 2, Kamrup (M), Guwahati in Criminal Revision No. 26/2023 stands set aside and quashed," the Gauhati HC said.

Justice Choudhury, in his order, also instructed that as the petitioner (Gandhi) is a sitting Member of Parliament, the trial court magistrate shall take measures to expeditiously dispose of the case, which has been going on since 2016.

On December 12, 2015, Gandhi had intended to visit Barpeta Satra (Vaishnavite monastery), but later claimed that he was barred from entering the abbey by the workers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Aggrieved by this, RSS worker Bora filed the criminal defamation case, alleging that the Congress leader had made false statements.