India

Rahul Gandhi Served Notice By Sambhal Court For ‘Fight Against Indian State’ Comment

New Delhi: Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha has been issued a notice by the district court of Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh, for his alleged statement regarding a ‘fight against the Indian state.’ The court has asked Rahul to appear before it or submit a reply on April 4.

According to complainant Simran Gupta, Rahul had made a statement on January 15 this year in which he had claimed that the Opposition in the country is not only “fighting the BJP and the RSS, but the Indian state itself.”

The complaint had initially been rejected by the chief judicial magistrate on grounds of jurisdiction, but a revision petition led the district judge’s court to serve notice to the Congress leader.

Rahul had made the comment during inauguration of the new Congress headquarters in New Delhi. “Our ideology, like the RSS ideology, is thousands of years old, and it has been fighting the RSS ideology for thousands of years. Do not think that we are fighting a fair fight. There is no fairness in this. If you believe that we are fighting a political organisation like the BJP or RSS, you have not understood what is going on. The BJP and the RSS have captured every single institution of our country. We are now fighting the BJP, the RSS and the Indian state itself,” he had said.

Rahul was disqualified from the Lok Sabha in 2023 after a court in Surat sentenced him to two-years imprisonment for defaming the ‘Modi’ surname. He was reinstated after the Supreme Court stayed the conviction. Even now, Rahul is embroiled in another defamation case, regarding comments made before the 2018 Karnataka Assembly polls.

He also faces criminal charges in Guwahati, Assam, for alleged anti-national activities.