'Nathuram Godse was indeed an RSS member': Pawan Khera says 'Savarkar's grand-nephew told court'

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and MP Pawan Khera has claimed that a grand-nephew of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar had allegedly told a Pune court that Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Khera said that the RSS has "disowned Nathuram Godse", but the statement in the court was a "stinging slap in the Sangh's face."

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"Truth has a strange way of coming to light. The RSS has spent a little over 78 years disowning Godse, only for their guru Savarkar's grand-nephew to deliver a stinging slap in the Sangh's face by telling a Pune court that Godse, Gandhi Ji's murderer, was indeed an RSS member. This is only the beginning. The day is not far when this truth comes back to haunt every Sanghi", the Congress leader said on X.

Khera's remarks come amid renewed political debate over Godse's alleged association with the RSS and the organisation's historical position on his relationship with the Sangh.

Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948, was subsequently tried and sentenced to death. His execution took place in November 1949.

The statement came in the backdrop of a defamation case against Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in Pune.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court quashed a criminal defamation complaint and the summons issued against Rahul Gandhi by a Lucknow Magistrate court over his alleged remarks against Vinayak Damodar Savarkar during the 2022 Bharat Jodo Yatra.

A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu quashed the complaint and the orders passed by the Magistrate after taking note of the Uttar Pradesh government's failure to disclose the requisite sanction in the case.

The bench said that the Additional Solicitor General and the complainant's counsel, based on the affidavit filed by the Uttar Pradesh government, submitted that there was no disclosure of the sanction.

"In such view of the matter, the complaint and orders passed by the magistrate stand quashed," the bench said in its order.

The case stemmed from remarks allegedly made by Gandhi during a press conference in 2022, in which he referred to Savarkar as a "servant of the British" and alleged that he received a pension from the British.