DHAKA: Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son and deputy Rahul Gandhi were Saturday granted bail in the National Herald case, minutes after they arrived at the Patiala House court.

Four others - including other top Congress leaders and Gandhi family associates - accused in the case have also been granted bail. India’s former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood surety for Sonia Gandhi.

Hearing in the case began at 3:00pm (local time) and had ended by 3.03pm. Congress leader and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal appeared in court for the Gandhis.

He said the court had fixed February 20 as the next date of hearing.

Among top Congress leaders present at the Patiala House courts today was Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

The Gandhis are among six people accused by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy of trying to illegally acquire real estate worth thousands of crores belonging to the now defunct newspaper National Herald, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru.

Ahead of the hearing, Congress leaders accused the BJP of targeting opposition parties. ‘The government is resorting to an unprecedented level of vendetta politics,’ said Ghulam Nabi Azad, alleging that the BJP ‘now wants an opposition-free country’.

The BJP has hit back, with union minister Ravi SHankar Prasad saying, ‘Rahul Gandhi (is an) expert in lying. If he has a problem with the High Court, he can go to the Supreme Court. We are in government with the peoples’ mandate’.

He was referring to Rahul Gandhi’s earlier comment that the National Herald case is ‘100 percent political vendetta coming out of the Prime Minister’s Office’.

BDST: 1707 HRS, DEC 19, 2015
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** Sonia, Rahul to appear in court in Herald case