New Delhi: A metropolitan court in Gujarat on Friday granted bail to former Congress chief after he pleaded not guilty in a criminal defamation suit filed by the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank and its chairman, Ajay Patel.
The suit was filed by the bank against Gandhi after he alleged that it had swapped Rs 750 crore in scrapped currency with valid notes within five days of announcement of demonetisation on November 8, 2016.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate NB Munshi asked Gandhi if he accepted the charges. The Congress leader pleaded not guilty. His lawyer then applied for bail, which was granted.
Gandhi had levelled the allegations on Twitter last year. The court had issued him summons on April 9 after finding that there was prima facie evidence against him.
The complainant said the Congress leader had levelled "false and defamatory allegations" against the bank.
Before issuing the summons, the court conducted an inquiry under section 202 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to decide whether there are sufficient grounds for proceeding against him.
While Gandhi's allegation was based on a reply purportedly given by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to an RTI query, ADCB denied that it exchanged such a huge amount of scrapped currency.
Gandhi arrived in Ahmedabad earlier in the day, where he thanked his opponents in the RSS and the BJP for providing him with opportunities to take his ideological battle against them to the public.
Gandhi faces multiple defamation cases across the country, including one filed by Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi over his jibe that all "thieves" seemed to have Modi as surname.
Another case against him, filed in a Mumbai court, relates to his statement linking the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh with the "RSS-BJP ideology".
(With inputs from PTI)
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