In the latest update on the defamation case against the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, a Pune court on Thursday (27th November) rejected the complainant, Satyaki Savarkar’s, request to play an additional CD containing video evidence of Gandhi’s defamatory remarks about freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
Magistrate Anmol Shinde, who was hearing the defamation case, declined the request, saying that no such additional CD was on record. Earlier, the court had declined Satyaki’s request to play a YouTube video of Gandhi’s defamatory speech.
During a hearing of the case on 14th November, Satyaki Savarkar, grandnephew of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, had sought the permission of the court to play the YouTube video and the additional CD after the original CD submitted to the court mysteriously turned out to be blank.
The CD played during the examination-in-chief of Satyaki showed no data, leaving the court and the complainant shocked. Subsequently, Satyaki’s counsel, Advocate Sangram Kolhatkar, requested to play the YouTube video, which was declined by the court on the same day.
The complainant said that the CD contained the video when it was ealier played before the court
Satyaki’s counsel, Advocate Sangram Kolhatkar, informed the court that the original CD containing Gandhi’s speech was submitted before the court at the time of the registration of the case in 2023. Kolhatkar said that the CD was played before another judge who was previously hearing the case, at the cognisance stage, following which, summons were issued to Rahul Gandhi.
“When the case was registered in 2023 in the court, we had submitted the original CD containing the alleged video along with the URL of the YouTube channel. The other judge, in whose court the case was being heard, then saw that the video on the CD was indeed playing. Now, the CD shows no data,” Kolhatkar said.
After discovering that the original CD was blank, Advocate Kolhatkar sought the permission of the court, the same day, to play an available YouTube video of the speech. Kolhatkar’s request was met with a strong objection from Gandhi’s counsel, Advocate Milind Dattatray Pawar, who contended that such online content was not directly admissible as evidence before the court.
Allowing Pawar’s objection, Magistrate Shinde referred to the Indian Evidence Act and said that the YouTube video URL was not supported by a certificate as required under Section 65-B of the Act, and therefore, was not admissible. “The URL is not supported by a certificate as per Section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act. Therefore, the URL is not admissible in evidence,” the Magistrate said.
The complainant sought a judicial inquiry into disappearance of data from the CD
Subsequently, Kolhatkar filed an application before the court to allow an additional CD to be played before it. He produced two additional CDs before the Magistrate, urging him to inspect them in the open court. Pawar objected to this as well. Kolhatkar’s application was rejected by the court for not complying with the India Evidence Act. Thereafter, Kolhatkar sought to challenge the rejection and initiate a judicial inquiry into how the CD, which earlier contained data, turned out to be blank. He asked for an adjournment, which was granted.
The case relates to a speech made by Rahul Gandhi at an event in London in which he made defamatory remarks against Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. According to the complaint, in his speech, Gandhi claimed that V D Savarkar had written in a book that he and five to six of his friends once beat up a Muslim man, and he (Savarkar) felt happy. It stated that no such incident had ever taken place, and V D Savarkar never wrote any such thing anywhere.
