A day after the Gujarat police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) opposed arrested activist Teesta Setalvad’s bail application and claimed in an affidavit before a court that she was part of a “larger conspiracy” hatched by late Congress leader Ahmed Patel, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday alleged that Congress president Sonia Gandhi was the “driving force” behind the “conspiracy” to implicate then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots case in the state.
Sambit Patra, the spokesperson for the saffron party, alleged that Ahmed Patel, who was advisor to Sonia Gandhi and a top Congress leader, was just the medium through which the Congress matriarch acted to destabilise the then Gujarat government and damage Narendra Modi’s political career.
Patra demanded that Sonia Gandhi should address a press conference on this.
The attack from the BJP came a day after the Gujarat police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) claimed in its affidavit that Patel hatched conspiracy to get the state government dismissed after the 2002 riots.
Earlier in the day, reacting on the allegations against Patel, the Congress hit out at Narendra Modi and said the allegations against Ahmed Patel were a “part of the Prime Minister’s systematic strategy to absolve himself of any responsibility for the communal carnage unleashed in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
“The Prime Minister’s political vendetta machine clearly does not even spare the departed who were his political adversaries,” the statement read.
The Statement further said, “Giving judgment through 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. 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.”
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