[The complaint against the Gandhis
and four other senior party officials was filed in 2012 by Subramanian Swamy, a
onetime economics professor who has made a career of bringing corruption cases
against politicians and officials, typically those who are rivals to the B.J.P.]
 |
Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, center,
arrived at a
for bail on Saturday. Credit
Rajat Gupta/European Press photo Agency
|
The criminal charge, filed by a
legal gadfly who is also a senior member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, claims
that Mrs. Gandhi and Rahul, her son, illegally gained control over real estate
that belonged to a defunct party newspaper and that is now worth hundreds of
millions of dollars. The Gandhis, who deny any wrongdoing, were each granted
unconditional bail of 50,000 rupees, or about $754, their lawyers said.
The case, which is likely to drag on for years, may test the
depth of support for the Gandhis’ party, the Indian National Congress, which
suffered a bitter electoral defeat 19 months ago.
Past prosecutions of Indian
leaders have led to an outpouring of sympathy, setting the stage for political
revival. Some defendants turn their hearings into a kind of populist theater,
often appearing among throngs of well-wishers.
Mrs.
Gandhi arrived at court with top party officials on Saturday, but she mainly
opted against theatrics, pausing to acknowledge party workers who bent to touch
her feet in a sign of veneration. In remarks at the party’s offices, she
promised to fight.
“We are very familiar with the attacks and the malicious
campaigns of our political opponents,” she said. “None of us is scared. Our
fight against them will continue.”
The complaint against the Gandhis and four other senior party
officials was filed in 2012 by Subramanian Swamy, a onetime economics professor
who has made a career of bringing corruption cases against politicians and
officials, typically those who are rivals to the B.J.P.
Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, however, have distanced
themselves from Mr. Swamy’s efforts. M. J. Akbar, a spokesman, said neither the
party nor the government had any role in the complaint against the Gandhis.
“An individual case has been filed by Dr. Swamy,” he said. “He
has filed it a long time ago. The law is proceeding at its own pace, and on its
own merits.”
The central government has also
acknowledged Mr. Swamy’s importance, however, by providing him with its
so-called Z level of security protection, the second-highest category. On
Thursday, Mr. Swamy said, he was granted the use of a coveted government
bungalow, normally reserved for top officials.
In an interview, Mr. Swamy said he was confident that his
efforts enjoyed the full support of the B.J.P.’s representatives in Parliament
— “the mood is absolute euphoria over what I have done” — and of the party’s
ideological “fountainhead,” the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu
nationalist organization.
He said that he had not asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for
support, but that he suspected Mr. Modi would approve.
“I have known him since 1972,”
Mr. Swamy said. “He has come around to my view on many things, including that
you cannot be conciliatory to Sonia
Gandhi. I’m sure if I went and talked to him now on this issue, he
would be quite happy with me, that I have shown her her place.”
The complaint claims that the Gandhis and other top Congress
officials misused resources allocated to The National Herald, a newspaper that
was founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, the great-grandfather of Rahul, in 1937 and
shut down in 2008, after years of mounting debts.
Mr. Swamy contends that when the newspaper shut down, it failed
to pay back outstanding debts to the party of 900 million rupees which had been
extended on a tax-free basis. He also contends that party assets associated with
the newspaper, including real estate worth about $300 million, were absorbed
into a newly formed nonprofit organization whose principal shareholders include
Rahul and Sonia Gandhi.
Congress officials rejected those allegations, arguing that none
of the shareholders in the nonprofit, Young Indian, drew any income from it,
and that the real estate assets were not owned by the nonprofit.
Scores of party workers were gathered outside Congress
headquarters, some bleary-eyed and unshaven after all-night bus rides to the
capital, propping up life-size portraits of Mr. Nehru’s daughter, Indira
Gandhi, and her son Rajiv Gandhi, whose assassinations thrust Sonia Gandhi,
Rajiv’s wife, into politics. Asha Pal Singh, 58, a rice farmer from Rae Bareli,
the Uttar Pradesh constituency Mrs. Gandhi represents, said he had come in a
convoy of 20 buses.
“Indira Gandhi was a lady of
sacrifice, and Sonia Gandhi is also a lady of sacrifice,” he said. “My father
went to jail for Indira Gandhi, and, if the necessity comes, I will go to jail
for Sonia Gandhi.”
Hari
Kumar contributed reporting.
