Hundreds of Congress workers and supporters staged a protest in Guwahati in Assam on Thursday After a Gujarat court held Congress MP Rahul Gandhi guilty in a 2019 defamation case and sentenced him to two years imprisonment.
The protesters raised slogans in front of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) headquarters in Assam’s Guwahati in support of Rahul Gandhi. The protestors were seen waving Congress flags and raising slogans against the Modi government.
The Assam Police put up barricades at the demonstration site to prevent the protestors from taking to the city streets. The protestors and police also engaged in a scuffle when the law enforcers tried to stop them from marching ahead.
Speaking to ABP Live, APCC President Bhupen Kumar Bora said, “It is necessary for political leaders to use some words while addressing a public issue, and this time, the allusion was to a corruption-related issue rather than a specific community or race. It is now clear that the BJP is working to discredit the leaders of the Opposition parties by using their remarks.”
“Nothing about the court's judgment offends us. We will talk about that legally. However, the case was brought by a former BJP minister. Now everyone is aware and even parties like AAP and TMC have said that Rahul Gandhi is being tried for speaking out against Prime Minister Modi's corruption," Bora added.
All India Congress Committee (AICC) Media Coordinator Bobbeeta Sharma said, “We have always seen that the BJP has been obsessed with Rahul Gandhiji and he has been harassed right, left, and centre. Whenever he speaks, they get very agitated. This is an old case and anything can be said in political rallies. Even the BJP leaders speak about a lot of things in political rallies, but we don't go after them. We don’t file any case against them.”
“We have seen that not only in political rallies but even in Parliament he is harassed and he is insulted. Recently, we saw that he was even asked to change his name to Nehru. Wasn't that an insult," asked Sharma. “We didn’t file a case against the person who said it. The honourable Prime Minister had said it... The Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi is in jail. A lot of people have been indicted by the ED and CBI. I hope the people of India realise what is happening," she added.
Earlier on Thursday, a court in Gujarat's Surat held Rahul Gandhi guilty in a defamation case and sentenced the Wayanad MP to two years imprisonment. The case dates back to 2019.
The court, however, approved Gandhi’s bail against a surety amount of Rs 15,000 and later stayed the sentence for 30 days to allow him to appeal.
The defamation case, filed by BJP MLA from Surat West Purnesh Modi, pertains to the alleged remarks that Rahul Gandhi made in 2019 during a Lok Sabha election rally in Karnataka where he said, “Why do all the thieves have Modi in their names — be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, or Narendra Modi?"