The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Thursday closed a defamation case against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi filed by the son of Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Kartikey Singh Chauhan had filed the suit before a trial court after Gandhi allegedly linked him to the Panama Papers row during the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections campaign in 2018.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh at the time.

Between 2016 and 2018, several documents from the database of a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, were leaked. The documents revealed details about hidden offshore wealth of some of the world’s top leaders and celebrities. The list included 500 Indians. At least 12,000 documents published in the 2018 tranche were linked to Indian citizens.

On Thursday, the High Court closed the proceedings against Gandhi after the Opposition leader expressed his regret for making the statement. Gandhi said that soon after the allegedly defamatory statement was published, he had issued a clarification.

Gandhi had clarified that he intended to refer to the son of the Chhattisgarh chief minister at the time and not Madhya Pradesh.

Abhishek Singh, the son of the former Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh, had denied the allegations made by Gandhi.

On Thursday, the bench also took into account a statement by Kartikey Singh Chauhan that he would not like to escalate the matter further after Gandhi had expressed regret.

Congress MP Vivek Tankha, who appeared in the court as Gandhi’s lawyer, said that publicly acknowledging a mistake “is the hallmark of a true and honest person”.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.