Allahabad HC withholds order directing FIR against Rahul Gandhi in alleged British citizenship case

The Allahabad High Court has withheld its order directing a case to be filed against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in response to a petition alleging that he is a British citizen.

Justice Subhash Vidyarthi said that the court will need to hear Gandhi first before passing such a direction.

On Friday, the judge had dictated an order in open court directing that a first information report should be registered against the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha in response to a petition by S Vignesh Shishir, who claims to be a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Karnataka unit.

The judge said in the written order that during the hearing, the court had asked the petitioner and the lawyer appearing for other parties whether a notice was required to be issued to Gandhi. The lawyers contended “that there is no requirement of issuance of a notice to the proposed accused”, the court said.

The judge, however, said that before the judgment ordering an FIR could be typed and signed, the court came across a judgment by a full bench of the Allahabad High Court from 2014.

The full bench verdict had held that a magistrate’s order rejecting an application under Section 156(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure for the registration of a case is not an interlocutory order, or a temporary directive that only addresses a specific aspect of a litigation.

“Such an order is amenable to the remedy of a criminal revision under Section 397,” Vidyarthi said on Friday. Section 397 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows a High Court or sessions court to exercise powers of revision.

“In proceedings in revision under Section 397, the prospective accused or, as the case may be, the person who is suspected of having committed the crime, is entitled to an opportunity of being heard before a decision is taken in the criminal revision,” the judge said.

The court noted that the application could not be decided without issuing a notice to Gandhi, and posted the matter for hearing on April 20.

The petition

Shishir, in his petition, had submitted the details of Backops Limited, a company incorporated in 2003 in the United Kingdom, where Gandhi had purportedly declared his nationality as British.

The petition claimed that Shishir had filed a complaint with the Raebareli Police in July 2024 seeking registration of an FIR against Gandhi under several provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and under the Passports Act.

Shishir said he moved a trial court after the police failed to act on his complaint. After the trial court also rejected his petition seeking an FIR, he approached the High Court.