Mumbai: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi appeared in a Bhiwandi court in the outskirts of Mumbai on Wednesday in a defamation case filed by an Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) functionary over his 2014 speech where he had held the organisation's members responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Congress workers have put up posters on the way saying they will fight the killers of Mahatma Gandhi.
RSS defamation case: Rahul Gandhi enroute Bhiwandi court pic.twitter.com/yCjYA5JkPz— ANI (@ANI_news) November 16, 2016
While addressing a public rally at Sonale in Bhiwandi on March 6, 2014 Rahul had alleged it was "RSS people" who had killed Mahatma Gandhi.
"RSS people killed Gandhiji and today their people (BJP) talk of him...They opposed Sardar Patel and Gandhiji," he had said.
Rahul had earlier expressed his readiness to face trial after the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the criminal proceedings pending against him before the trial court.
The Supreme Court rapped the Gandhi scion for his remarks asking him to either apologise or face trial in the case. "If you won't apologise, you will have to face trial," the court said pulling up the Congress leader for his remarks.
"We have held it may be historically correct but the fact or the statement has to meet the test of public good. You can't make collective denunciation," a Bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and RF Nariman said.
The Bench said that "freedom is not crippled or curbed. What is curbed is freedom of speech. What the writers, politicians, critics or antagonists say, you must have great magnitude to swallow".
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