Defamation case: Pune court rejects Rahul's plea seeking maternal family tree of Savarkar's kin
A Pune court rejected an application filed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi seeking the maternal family tree of Satyaki Savarkar, the grandnephew of V D Savarkar.
Satyaki Savarkar had filed a defamation complaint against Rahul for his alleged objectionable remarks against the Hindutva ideologue during a speech in London in March 2023.
Satyaki's mother Himani Ashok Savarkar is the daughter of Gopal Godse, the younger brother of Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi's assassin.
Rejecting Rahul's plea, special judge Amol Shinde of the MP/MLA court on May 28 observed that 'this case is related only to alleged defamatory speech made by the accused in London against VD Savarkar.'
The order was uploaded on the court's website Saturday.
According to Satyaki, Rahul had claimed in his speech that Savarkar had written a book in which Savarkar mentioned that he (Savarkar) and five to six of his friends were beating up a Muslim person, and they were 'delighted' about it.
Satyaki said VD Savarkar had not written any such book, nor had such an incident ever happened. In his petition, Satyaki had stated that Gandhi had intentionally made false, malicious and wild allegations against Savarkar.
Satyaki had submitted a few news reports as well as a YouTube link of a video of Gandhi's speech in London as evidence.
Rahul's lawyer Milind Pawar had filed an application before the court seeking an English translation of the book 'Mazi Janmathep' authored by V D Savarkar, another book 'Hindutva' also authored by him, and the family tree of Satyaki Savarkar.
Satyaki's lawyer Sangram Kolhatkar provided the same to advocate Pawar in the court.
But, on March 28, advocate Pawar filed an application on behalf of Rahul saying, 'The complainant (Satyaki) has deliberately, systematically, very brilliantly avoided, and suppressed to disclose the family tree from his maternal side in the present complaint.
Therefore this is one of the most important issues and circumstances in this case to decide on merits and that should be ascertained before plea and commencement of this trial… Therefore directions be issued to the complainant to file a family tree on the maternal side and explanation be sought on the suppression.'
Advocate Kolhatkar called the application 'baseless, false and filed with malafide intent.'
Rejecting the plea, the court, its order, stated that Satyaki is the grandson of one of the brothers of late V D Savarkar and the said case is not related to the family tree of his mother Himani Savarkar.
'Therefore, this court does not find any merit in the application of the accused (Rahul Gandhi). There is also no need to send the matter for further investigation. Hence the application sans merits and the same is liable to be rejected,' the court order stated.
Meanwhile, Satyaki has filed an application requesting the court to direct Rahul Gandhi to produce the book that he quoted while making the alleged defamatory statement during his speech in London.
Advocate Pawar is likely to reply to this application. The next hearing on this matter is scheduled on June 12.
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