Rafale verdict in India: Supreme Court seeks Rahul Gandhi’s explanation on contempt plea

NEW DELHI, Apr 15, 2019, The Hindu. The Supreme Court on Monday directed Congress president Rahul Gandhi to explain why he chose to incorrectly attribute the phrase ‘chowkidar chor hai’ to the apex court judgment in the Rafale case. A Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi clarified that the apex court had “no occasion to make such observations” in its April 10 judgment, which solely concerned a legal question about the admissibility of certain documents as evidence in the Rafale review petitions, reported The Hindu.

The court ordered Mr. Gandhi to reply on or before April 22.

Mr. Gandhi has to now explain to the court why he chose to, both in the media and to the public, attribute the phrase “chowkidar chor hai” to the apex court.

The order came on a criminal contempt petition filed by BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi against Mr. Gandhi.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, for Ms. Lekhi, said Mr. Gandhi deliberately misinterpreted the recent judgment of the Supreme Court in the Rafale case, dismissing certain preliminary objections raised by the government. Mr. Gandhi purposefully gave a coloured interpretation to the judgment in order to personally attack Mr. Modi.

Mr. Rohatgi said the Congress president was widely quoted on national television and in newspapers.

On April 10, a Bench led by Chief Justice Gogoi had declared the court’s unanimous support for freedom of Press in a democracy. The Supreme Court had refused the government’s plea to keep the Rafale jets’ purchase documents a secret and commended The Hindu for first bringing the documents into public domain by continually publishing them in a series of articles since February 2019.

The court had dismissed preliminary objections raised by the government against petitions seeking a review of the December 14, 2018 judgment of the Supreme Court, which upheld the 36 Rafale jets’ deal.

The government had claimed that the reviews were based on secret Rafale documents unauthorisedly removed from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and leaked to the media. Mr. Venugopal had argued that “stolen” documents came under the protection of the Official Secrets Act (OSA). They were not admissible in evidence in a court of law. Claiming privilege, the government had wanted the court to ignore the documents, even if they were found to be germane to the Rafale case, and dismiss the review petitions at a preliminary stage.

The apex court however rubbished the government’s claim of privilege. It said neither OSA nor any other law empowers the government to stop the media from publishing the documents nor the court from examining them. Besides, Chief Justice Gogoi said claiming privilege over the Rafale documents was an “exercise in utter futility”.