Fast-track to jail: Gandhi verdict raises questions on freedom of India's courts

In a court system with a backlog of 40m cases, one lawsuit appeared to move through India’s courtrooms unusually fast.

- Hannah Ellis-Petersen

It concerned Rahul Gandhi, the country’s best-known opposition leader, and comments he had made at a campaign rally during the 2019 general election.

He compared his political rival, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, with two convicted criminals who also bore the same surname. “Why do all these thieves have Modi as a surname?” Gandhi asked crowds gathered in the state of Karnataka.

Hundreds of miles away in Gujarat, Purnesh Modi, an elected representative of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), filed a legal case, alleging Gandhi had defamed the “entire Modi community”. There are an estimated 130 million people called Modi in India.

For the next two years, the case progressed at a glacial pace common to India’s courts, with months-long gaps, including a freeze at Purnesh Modi’s request. But on 16 February this year, he suddenly returned, citing “new evidence” that would never appear.

With a new judge at the helm, the case now moved, as one Congress leader described it, like a “bullet train”. Seven hearings took place in just 20 days and by 23 March Gandhi was found guilty of defamation. He was sentenced to two years in jail, the maximum.

Gautam Bhatia, a supreme court lawyer, called the verdict “completely indefensible from any perspective”.