New Delhi: Shortly after a Special Investigation Team looking into the 2002 Gujarat riots blamed senior party leader late Ahmed Patel for plotting against PM Modi, a miffed Congress refuted the allegations and said that the premier’s “political vendetta machine does not even spare his departed political adversaries.”
“The Prime Minister’s political vendetta machine clearly does not even spare the departed who were his political adversaries,” Congress communications in charge Jairam Ramesh said in a statement. "The Indian National Congress categorically refutes the mischievous charges manufactured against the late Ahmed Patel,” he said.
The charges against Patel are part of an affidavit submitted by the SIT which opposed the bail of activist Teesta Setalvad in a sessions court. As per the SIT affidavit, Setalvad was part of a "larger conspiracy" carried out at the behest of late Ahmed Patel to dismiss the BJP government in the state after the 2002 riots.
The Congress blamed the PM for the riots saying he was trying to absolve himself of the charges he faced as the CM of Gujarat and pointed out that the then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had even reminded Modi of his duty. “This is part of the Prime Minister’s systematic strategy to absolve himself of any responsibility for the communal carnage unleashed when he was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002. It was his unwillingness and incapacity to control this carnage that had led the-then Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee to remind the chief minister of his Rajdharma,” said Ramesh.
Also read: Setalvad was part of conspiracy to dismiss BJP govt in Gujarat: SIT
The Congress leader further said that the present special probe team was taking orders from its political masters just like an earlier SIT chief did. “This SIT is dancing to the tune of its political master and will sit wherever it is told to. We know how an earlier SIT chief was rewarded with a diplomatic assignment after he had given a ‘clean chit’ to the chief minister (Modi),” said Ramesh.
The Congress leader alleged that it has been a tactic of the PM and his home minister to make such wild allegations against a deceased person through puppet agencies in an ongoing judicial process. “Giving judgment through the press, in an ongoing judicial process, through puppet investigative agencies who trumpet wild allegations as supposed findings, has been the hallmark of the Modi-Shah duo’s tactics for years,” said Ramesh.
“This is nothing but another example of the same, with the added object of vilifying a deceased person since he is obviously unable and unavailable to refute such brazen lies,” he said.
