A special Pune court, while hearing a defamation case against the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, rejected the request to play a YouTube video after a CD submitted as main evidence was found blank.
The complainant, Satyaki Savarkar, who is the grand nephew of freedom fighter and Hindu ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, stated that the CD was earlier played before a different judge in the court. He had filed a complaint against the Congress leader for his alleged defamatory speech in London, 2023. At present, the case is being heard by Judicial Magistrate (First Class) Amol Shinde.
During Satyaki's examination-in-chief, which is the first round of questioning on November 14, the CD with the video of the alleged defamatory speech of Rahul Gandhi couldn't be played in the court after no data was found.
Later on Thursday, Satyaki had requested to play an additional CD provided to the court. But it was rejected after the judge said that there was no record of such a CD.
According to a report by PTI, Satyaki 's lawyer, Advocate Sangram Kolhatkar, claimed that the case, when registered in 2023, was heard by another judge who saw the CD submitted as evidence containing the alleged video along with the YouTube channel's URL.
He said, "When the case was registered in 2023 in the court, we had submitted the original CD containing the alleged video along with the URL of the YouTube channel. The other judge, in whose court the case was being heard, then saw that the video on the CD was indeed playing. Now, the CD shows no data."
The court, which hears cases against MPs and MLAs, has dismissed Satyaki's application to play a YouTube video of Rahul's alleged speech after the video was found blank. Rahul's advocate, Milind Pawar, opposed the request of advocate Kothalkar to play the original link of the YouTube video.
In his order, Justice Shinde stated that the complainant had filed a certificate under Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act for the CD; however, it cannot be applied to the YouTube URL. He added that the certificate does not back the YouTube URL.
