Congress leader Rahul Gandhi came under sharp criticism from the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday for his remarks during the 2022 Bharat Jodo Yatra, where he alleged that Chinese troops were “thrashing Indian soldiers in Arunachal Pradesh.” The court was hearing a petition filed by Gandhi seeking to quash summons issued by a Lucknow court in a defamation case. The court dismissed his plea, emphasizing that while freedom of speech is a constitutional right, it cannot be stretched to include defamatory statements against the Indian Army.

The case was triggered by a complaint filed by Uday Shankar Srivastava, a retired Director of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), who objected to Gandhi’s statements made during a press interaction in Rajasthan. The complainant argued that the remarks were derogatory and demoralizing, and that media silence on such serious issues was being misrepresented. Rahul Gandhi, in his defense, claimed that Srivastava was not a direct stakeholder and therefore could not be termed as an “aggrieved person” in the defamation matter.

However, the court countered this by referring to Section 199(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which allows individuals indirectly affected by defamatory statements to seek legal remedy. The bench observed that as a former BRO Director—a rank equivalent to a Colonel—Srivastava held sufficient standing. The court concluded that national institutions like the Army must not be dragged into political commentary, reiterating that free speech cannot be used as a shield for baseless allegations that potentially harm national morale.