Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said attempts to “arm-twist” him into apologising for his remark that “all thieves have Modi surname” was “bizarre”.
Mr. Gandhi was replying to Gujarat BJP MLA Purnesh Modi’s affidavit in the apex court. The Gujarat MLA had accused the Congress leader of “arrogance” for not refusing to apologise.
“The petitioner is a parliamentarian and an Opposition leader, and therefore it was necessary for him to critically evaluate the conduct and performance of the ruling establishment,” Mr. Gandhi’s rejoinder affidavit, filed by advocate Prasanna S, said.
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Mr. Gandhi, who has approached the top court for a stay of his conviction in a criminal defamation case based on Mr. Modi’s complaint, said it was slanderous to call him arrogant only because he had refused to apologise.
The Congress leader said the criminal process and the consequences of disqualification from the Lok Sabha under the Representation of the People Act were being used to “arm-twist” him.
“This is a gross abuse of the judicial process… The petitioner [Mr. Gandhi] has always maintained that he is not guilty of the offence and his conviction is unsustainable. If he had to apologise and compound the offence, he would have done it much earlier,” the Congress leader’s rejoinder affidavit submitted.
It said Mr. Modi had “absurdly trivialised the very idea of moral turpitude” by claiming that the offence of defamation involved moral turpitude.
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“Criminal antecedents”
Mr. Gandhi said the BJP MLA refers constantly to his “criminal antecedents” without understanding that the term meant a person who is a previous convict.
The Congress leader said the complaints against him were filed by rival political groups and were at a nascent stage. Even cases in which he had not been summoned have been referred by Mr. Modi for extraneous reasons.
The rejoinder said the offence of defamation would only apply to an identifiable class of persons. The Gujarat legislator had constantly changed goal posts about whether the Modi surname could be identified to a finite, specific class of people. In fact, Mr. Modi had himself submitted that he was from “Modi Samaj” when there was “no Modi Samaj or community”. Then he had said he belonged to the “Modh Vanika” Samaj. This name was common to other communities as well, it noted.
