Mumbai:
A local court in Bhiwandi has issued summons to Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for his comments on the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS) during an election rally in the area during the Lok Sabha elections this year.
The summons were issued after a RSS worker Rajesh Kunte filed a case on March 18. Mr Gandhi, 44, had told supporters in an election rally on March 6 that the RSS had a role to play in Mahatma Gandhi's assassination in 1948.
Mr Gandhi had said that the RSS was behind Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and Sardar Patel had written about it as well. The court had asked for a police report and after studying the report the court has summoned Mr Gandhi on October 7.
Mr Gandhi had led the Congress Party's unsuccessful campaign in the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year. The Congress party managed to win a paltry 44 seats in total while in Maharashtra the party managed just two seats. Mr Gandhi had later taken responsibility for his party's crushing defeat.
Maharashtra goes to poll in a few months and Mr Gandhi's party, which has been in power for 15 years in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), faces a tough challenge from the saffron combine of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena.
Last month, Mr Gandhi and his mother, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, the top two leaders of the Congress, were asked to appear in a Delhi court on August 7 in a case that accuses them of cheating and criminal breach of trust. The case was filed by the BJP's Subramanian Swamy who claims that the Gandhis broke the law to grab valuable properties in Delhi, including the office of the National Herald, a newspaper that was set up in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru. The paper closed down in 2008.
In response to the charges, the Congress ceded in 2012 that it had given "interest-free loans from which no commercial profit has accrued to the Indian National Congress" to help bring the National Herald "back to health in compliance with the laws of the land."