Thane (Maharashtra): A Bhiwandi court in Maharashtra's Thane district on Thursday postponed the hearing in a defamation case filed by a local RSS activist against senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to February 22.
The case dates back to 2014 when the RSS activist Rajesh Kunte, a local worker of the RSS, had in 2014 submitted in the court that Gandhi during his speech in Thane's Bhiwandi township alleged that the Sangh was behind the killing of Mahatma Gandhi. Kunte said that statement “slandered the reputation of the RSS”. In 2018, the court framed charges against Rahul Gandhi, who however pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
On Thursday, advocates Prabodh Jaywant and Ganesh Dhargalkar, representing complainant Kunte, while asking for a deferment, told the Bhiwandi court that their writ petition challenging some orders of lower courts in the matter was pending before the Supreme Court.
In an earlier scheduled hearing on February 5 also, Kunte requested the court to postpone the hearing saying his client was out of town for some personal reason after which the hearing was scheduled for Thursday. During its last hearing in the case on January 29, the Bhiwandi court had cited an order of the Supreme Court, which called for speedy disposal of cases involving elected representatives. The court had said that the case against Gandhi fell under the same category, hence, needs to be taken up on priority, fast-tracked and heard on a day-to-day basis.
