Savarkar defamation case: Rahul Gandhi’s affidavit claims complainant Nathuram Godse’s relative

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, in an application before a special MP/MLA court in Pune, has claimed that right-wing leader Vinayak Savarkar was a relative Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. He has accused Satyaki Savarkar of concealing this very fact from the court in his criminal defamation plea against him.

“As per information, mother of complainant Smt. Himani Ashok Savarkar was born on 31/03/1947 and died on 11/10/2015 at Pune. Late Smt. Himani Ashok Savarkar is daughter of Gopal Vinayak Godse, younger brother of Nathuram Vinayak Godse, who killed father of nation Mahatma Gandhi on 30/01/1948 and was hanged along with his accomplice Narayan Apte On 15/11/1949,” Gandhi said in his affidavit, as reported by NDTV.

According to the affidavit, Himani Savarkar was a Hindutva activist and married Ashok Savarkar, nephew of Vinayak Savarkar.

Gandhi, in his affidavit, stated that Satyaki Savarkar has only provided details of his “paternal side” of the family tree and not the maternal side.

The application also points that Vinayak Savarkar was a co-accused in the murder case of Mahatma Gandhi but was acquitted, the NDTV report added further.

Satyaki Savarkar had filed a defamation complaint against Rahul Gandhi in a Pune court citing his speech in London in March 2023.

According to the complaint, the Congress MP claimed in his speech that VD Savarkar had written in a "book" that "he and five to six of his friends once beat up a Muslim man and that he (Savarkar) felt happy".

VD Savarkar never wrote any such thing anywhere and called the remarks by Gandhi as "fictitious, false, and malicious", it said.