A special court for MPs will hear a petition against Congress President Rahul Gandhi for allegedly making seditious comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016, PTI reported. A Delhi court transferred the case to Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, who will hear the matter on April 26.
The complainant, lawyer Joginder Tuli, had asked the court to direct the police to register a first information report against Gandhi for accusing Modi of “hiding behind the blood of soldiers”. He sought an FIR for obscenity, insulting a public figure and committing the act of sedition, reported Bar and Bench.
The complaint referred to Gandhi’s speech at a public meeting in New Delhi. On October 6, 2016, Gandhi had said: “You [Modi] are hiding behind the blood of soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir and those who carried out the surgical strikes for India. You are exploiting their sacrifices, which is very wrong.”
The remark came a week after India claimed to have conducted pre-dawn surgical strikes across the Line of Control.
Tuli, in his petition, had said that the police should have acted against Gandhi as soon as he made the speech. “Uttering words openly in the public is highly wrong,” Mint quoted Tuli as saying. “Nobody has a right to say things against the soldiers.”
Tuli said he had approached the police soon after the speech, but they had not filed a case.
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