Defamation case against Rahul Gandhi: Court doesn't allow Satyaki Savarkar to play YouTube video

Rahul Gandhi (file image)

A court here has rejected Satyaki Savarkar's request to play a YouTube video of Rahul Gandhi's alleged 2023 defamatory speech about freedom-fighter and Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar.

In a subsequent development, the special court for cases against MPs and MLAs on Thursday also rejected an application by Satyaki, who is V D Savarkar's grand-nephew, requesting the court to play an additional CD provided to the court. No such additional CD was on record, the judge said.

On November 14, during Satyaki's examination-in-chief (initial examination of a witness by a lawyer from the complainant/prosecution's side), the CD containing the video of the alleged defamatory speech made by Rahul Gandhi in London in 2023, provided as evidence, could not run as it was found to contain no data.

Advocate Sangram Kolhatkar, the lawyer representing Satyaki Savarkar, requested the court to play the original link of the YouTube channel. But Gandhi's lawyer Advocate Milind Pawar opposed the request.

The court in its order on the same day stated that the complainant has filed a certificate as per Section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act with respect to the CD, but the same certificate cannot be used for the YouTube URL.

The URL or web link is not supported by a certificate as per section 65-B, and hence it can not be admitted as evidence, said Judicial Magistrate (First Class) Amol Shinde.

On November 27, Satyaki Savarkar requested the court to run the additional CD provided to the court.

However, the court stated that there was no such CD on record.

Advocate Kolhatkar said he has sought a judicial inquiry into the 'blank CD' and the missing additional CD.

"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 in the CD was indeed playing. Now, the CD shows no data," he said.

Satyaki Savarkar has alleged that Rahul Gandhi, currently Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, claimed in his speech in London 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.

No such incident had ever taken place, and V D Savarkar never wrote any such thing anywhere, the complaint stated.