A court in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, on Monday acquitted Congress leader and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case over remarks he made in 2018 about Amit Shah, who was then president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is now Union Home Minister, Bar and Bench reported.

Source: Bar and Bench

Gandhi was present in court when Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Shubham Verma pronounced the verdict. The court said the remarks made by Gandhi were not defamatory in nature, according to Bar and Bench. Live Law also reported the acquittal by the MP/MLA court in Sultanpur.

Source: Live Law

The complaint was filed in August 2018 by BJP leader Vijay Mishra, a former chairman of the Sultanpur District Cooperative Bank, under Sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code. It stemmed from Gandhi's statement at a Bengaluru press conference during the 2018 Karnataka Assembly campaign, in which he said people in India forget that the president of the BJP is a murder accused — a reference to the Sohrabuddin encounter case, in which Shah was discharged by a special CBI court in 2014, both outlets reported.

During the trial, Gandhi's side disputed the allegations and said the remarks had been presented out of context, while the complainant maintained they were defamatory, Live Law reported. Senior advocate R.S. Cheema appeared for Gandhi, according to Bar and Bench. Gandhi had travelled to Sultanpur on Monday morning for the verdict; his convoy was involved in a collision on the Purvanchal Expressway on the way, in which he escaped unhurt.

Earlier on Monday, vehicles in Gandhi's convoy collided on the Purvanchal Expressway while he was travelling to the hearing. Read the convoy collision report