A special MP-MLA court in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, acquitted Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday, 26 October 2026, in a defamation case dating back to remarks made during the 2018 Karnataka election campaign. Gandhi, the leader of India's main opposition Congress party, was present in court when the verdict was pronounced, according to television reports cited by Reuters, and supporters celebrated outside the court after the decision.

The remarks at the centre of the case

The case concerned remarks Gandhi allegedly made about Amit Shah, who was then president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and is now India's Home Minister, at a campaign rally in Bengaluru ahead of the 2018 Karnataka assembly elections. A local BJP member, Vijay Mishra, filed the complaint in Sultanpur on 4 August 2018. Reuters reported that Gandhi was accused of calling Shah a "murder accused" during the campaign speech, while the court, as reported by the Press Trust of India, found that his remarks were not defamatory. Gandhi had denied the allegations and his counsel had described the complaint as baseless, according to reporting of the proceedings.

Why the verdict matters now

The acquittal closes a case that had run for more than eight years. It comes at a politically charged moment: Reuters noted that Gandhi is leading a united opposition campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Chief Election Commissioner over a controversial revision of voter lists. The Sultanpur case is separate from a 2023 defamation conviction in Gujarat over a remark about the Modi surname, which briefly cost Gandhi his parliamentary seat. That distinction matters, because Monday's verdict removes the risk in the Sultanpur proceedings, rather than settling every legal challenge Gandhi has faced.