Savarkar’s grandnephew seeks Rahul Gandhi’s presence in court over withdrawn ‘threat’ plea 

Satyaki Ashok Savarkar, grandnephew of Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar, has urged Pune court to summon Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and make him personally affirm whether a series of applications filed in his name were indeed on his instructions.

The plea comes against the backdrop of a controversial “Pursis” filed on August 13, 2025, by Mr. Gandhi’s counsel, which suggested that his life was under threat from followers of V.D. Savarkar. The document was withdrawn the same day after Advocate Milind Pawar admitted he had filed it without consulting his client, even issuing a press release to clarify the mistake.  

In a fresh application dated September 10, 2025, filed before the special court for MPs and MLAs, Savarkar’s lawyer Advocate S.A. Kolhatkar argued that the matter could not be treated lightly. He submitted that Mr. Gandhi’s legal team had, since the start of the trial, repeatedly placed frivolous and malicious applications on record with the intention of tarnishing the image of Savarkar and humiliating his family.

According to the complainant, the withdrawn Pursis had deliberately invoked the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse to conflate Hindutva with violence and cast aspersions on the Savarkar family. The application also objected to Mr. Gandhi’s alleged attempts to link the complainant’s late mother, Himani Savarkar, to the 2008 Malegaon blast case, even though she was never an accused and all those tried in that case were acquitted by the NIA court. 

Mr. Kolhatkar further told the court that Mr. Gandhi’s lawyers had introduced unrelated political incidents in Delhi into the proceedings in Pune, purely to create chaos, build sympathy and extract political mileage. Mr. Savarkar alleged that Mr. Gandhi had repeatedly sought to associate his family with the Godse lineage, suggesting that he represented Nathuram Godse’s ideology, an attempt, he said, to damage his reputation in society and amounting to character assassination. 

The application also underscored that Rahul Gandhi had been granted permanent exemption from personal appearance under Section 205 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. While granting this relief, the court had clearly directed in clause (d) that his counsel must obtain instructions from him from time to time to conduct the trial. Mr. Kolhatkar argued that this condition had been breached, since Mr. Gandhi’s repeated failure to consult his advocate had resulted in unauthorised and misleading applications being filed, thereby violating the very order under which he was granted exemption. 

The petition emphasised that Mr. Gandhi could not now disown the August 13 Pursis by shifting blame onto his advocate. By doing so, it said, the Congress leader was attempting to make his own counsel a scapegoat. It urged the court to summon Mr. Gandhi personally and direct him to file an affidavit confirming whether earlier applications and Pursis were made with his knowledge and instructions. It also prayed for directions requiring him to attest or countersign every future filing to prevent a repeat of the August 13 incident. 

The defamation case against Rahul Gandhi stems from a speech he delivered in London in March 2023, where he allegedly claimed that V.D. Savarkar had written about beating up a Muslim man with friends and deriving satisfaction from it. Savarkar maintains that no such writing exists and has accused Gandhi of spreading falsehoods to malign his ancestor. The case will be heard next on September 22, 2025.