<div><b><span style="font-size: 1rem;">An Indian court today bailed senior opposition leader Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case brought against him for referring to the home minister as an accused murderer - his latest legal travails ahead of national elections.</span><br></b></div><div><br></div><div>Critics have accused India’s government of using the justice system to target political rivals, with several opposition figures the subject of active criminal investigations.</div><div><br></div><div>Gandhi, 53, faces at least 10 other defamation cases and was briefly disqualified from parliament last year after being convicted of criminal libel in an unrelated case.</div><div><br></div><div>He appeared in court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh where his bail application was accepted, lawyer Santosh Pandey told reporters outside court.</div><div><br></div><div>Today’s case stems from 2018 remarks in which he referred to home minister Amit Shah, a key confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as a “murder accused”.</div><div><br></div><div>Shah was accused of ordering police to carry out the extrajudicial killing of a gangster in 2005 and two others while serving as home minister in Gujarat state.</div><div><br></div><div>He was jailed briefly before being acquitted of murder, extortion and kidnapping charges in 2014 after Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won that year’s elections in a landslide.</div><div><br></div><div>The case against Gandhi was first lodged in 2018 by a ruling party official and has slowly been snaking its way through India’s glacial criminal justice system since.</div><div><br></div><div>Gandhi is the son, grandson and great-grandson of a dynasty of former Indian prime ministers, beginning with independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.</div><div><br></div><div>He is one of the leading faces of an opposition alliance seeking to challenge Modi in this year’s general election, expected to begin in April.</div><div><br></div><div>Gandhi has struggled to challenge the electoral juggernaut of Modi and his nationalist appeals to the country’s Hindu majority, losing the past two elections.</div><div><br></div><div>He was convicted last year of criminal libel and handed a two-year sentence, which was suspended by a higher court but raised concerns over democratic backsliding in the world’s most populous country.</div><div><br></div><div>Last week Gandhi’s Congress party said authorities had frozen its bank accounts after an investigation over its 2018-19 tax returns and issued a payment demand for 2.1 billion rupees in relation to its probe.</div><div><br></div><div>India’s main financial investigation agency, the enforcement directorate, has ongoing investigations into several other leading opposition politicians. - AFP&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>