CNN —India’s top court on Friday stayed Rahul Gandhi’s defamation conviction, offering a crucial reprieve for the embattled former chair of the country’s main opposition party who was disqualified as a lawmaker following a trial he maintained was politically motivated. Gandhi’s Congress party decried the conviction, accusing Modi of using the courts as a way to expel him from parliament and silence his critics. Since then, the opposition leader has been in and out of courtrooms, fighting for a suspension of his sentence that would allow him to be reinstated as a lawmaker. Gujarat is the state Modi used to run before becoming prime minister. His grandmother Indira Gandhi was India’s first female leader, and his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the country’s founding Prime Minister.

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Persons: CNN —, Rahul Gandhi’s, Narendra Modi, Gandhi’s, KC Kaushik, ” Gandhi, Modi, K.C, Kaushik, Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, India’s, Jawaharlal Nehru Organizations: CNN, Press Trust of, Indian National Congress, Gandhi’s, BJP, Indian Locations: Press Trust of India, Gujarat, India, Karnataka, INDIA, BJP, Tamil Nadu