High Court refuses to stay Rahul's conviction in defamation case

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Rahul Gandhi by a Surat court in a criminal defamation case filed by the former Gujarat minister Purnesh Modi. Gandhi's legal team headed by Abhishek Singhvi said it would appeal for stay on conviction in the Supreme Court. «There is no reasonable ground to stay the conviction of the applicant in the facts and circumstances of the case.

The impugned order passed by the appellate court is just, proper and legal and do not call for any interference,» HC judge Hemant Prachchak said in his order. However, he requested the Surat district judge to expeditiously decide on Gandhi's appeal. «Stay of conviction is not a rule but an exception.

Disqualification is not limited only to MPs/MLAs. Moreover, as many as ten criminal cases are pending against the applicant. It is now need of the hour to have purity in politics.

Representatives of people should be man of clear antecedent. It also appears from the record that after filing of the said complaint, another complaint came to be filed against the accused, out of which, one complaint was filed by the grandson of Vir Savarkar in concerned court of Puna when the accused used defamation utterances against Vir Savarkar at Cambridge and another complaint was also filed in concerned court of Lucknow,» the judge said. «It appears that the accused is a Member of Parliament possessing high position in the society and having bounden duty not to scandalize any person from the society and the defence of fair comment is neither proved nor believed by the courts below,» the judge said.