In an unusual admission in court during the cross-examination in a defamation case against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his statement that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar had written that he found it “pleasurable” to assault a Muslim man, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar said that his maternal grandfather, Gopal Godse, and his granduncle, Nathuram Godse, who were convicted in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, were active members of the RSS.
The admission was significant, particularly given the RSS’s repeated denial that Nathuram Godse and others involved in the assassination were members of the Sangh at the time, with the organisation maintaining that they were associated instead with the Hindu Mahasabha.
Testifying before Judicial Magistrate First Class Amol Shriram Shinde at the designated Special MP/MLA court in Pune, Satyaki conceded that Nathuram Godse shot dead Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948, leading to his subsequent execution alongside co-accused Narayan Apte.
The complainant, whose mother was Gopal Godse’s daughter, further acknowledged that while his granduncle Vinayak Savarkar was acquitted, Gopal Godse served a life sentence before eventually settling in Pune, where he penned several books and newspaper articles.
During Monday’s, Gandhi’s advocate Milind D. Pawar questioned Satyaki about Savarkar, the Godse family, and their associations with the Hindu Mahasabha, as well as their alleged links to the assassination case.
Satyaki conceded that Gopal Godse and Vinayak Savarkar were among those accused in the Gandhi assassination case; Savarkar was acquitted, Gopal Godse was sentenced to life imprisonment, while Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death.
Though Satyaki’s legal counsel, Sangram Kothalkar, raised formal objections against the line of questioning regarding familial culpability, the court decided to reserve its ruling on these objections until the delivery of the final judgment.
The cross-examination will resume on September 1.
The proceedings stem from a criminal defamation complaint initiated by Satyaki, who contended that Gandhi brought disrepute to the Hindutva ideologue during an address in March 2023 by falsely alleging that Savarkar authored accounts expressing delight in assaulting a Muslim individual.
The courtroom confrontation followed the magistrate’s dismissal of an intervention plea by researcher Pankaj K. Phadnis, who was penalised ₹20,000 for consuming judicial time without establishing locus standi.