Doesn't spare the departed: Congress hits back after Gujarat SIT claims Ahmed Patel plotted against Narendra Modi

The Congress on Saturday vehemently refuted the Gujarat Police’s claim that late Congress leader Ahmed Patel had hatched a conspiracy to frame the then chief minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots case. 

In a statement issued by party’s general secretary Jairam Ramesh, the Congress said it “categorically refutes the mischievous charges manufactured” against Patel, calling it a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “political vendetta”. 

“This is part of Prime Minister’s systematic strategy to absolve himself of any responsibility for the communal carnage unleashed when he was the chief minister of Gujarat in 2002. It was his unwillingness and incapacity to control this carnage that lad led the then Prime Minister of India Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee to remind the chief minister of his rajdharma,” the statement read. 

“The Prime Minister’s political vendetta machine clearly does not even spare the departed who were his political adversaries. 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,” it added. 

Statement Issued by @Jairam_Ramesh , General Secretary In- Charge, Communications, AICC pic.twitter.com/vZo55UcDcN

— Congress (@INCIndia) July 16, 2022

The SIT probing charges of fabrication of evidence and conspiracy linked to the 2002 Gujarat riots told a local court on Friday that the three accused -- activist Teesta Setalvad, retired DGP R B Sreekumar and former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt -- hatched a conspiracy to malign the state's image and frame innocent persons including the then CM Narendra Modi at the behest of Patel, who was then a Rajya Sabha MP and political advisor to party chief Sonia Gandhi. 

The probe team has claimed that Setalvad obtained “illegal finances and other benefits and rewards from the political party” for implicating and prosecuting “various authorities and other innocent persons in Gujarat, including the then chief minister Narendra Modi”. 

Setalvad has been arrested, along with former IPS officers R B Sreekumar and Sanjiv Bhatt, for allegedly fabricating evidence to frame innocent people in Gujarat riots cases.

Last month, a day after the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given to then chief minister Narendra Modi and others in Gujarat riots case, state police arrested Setalvad.

She, along with Sreekumar and Bhatt, was booked under IPC sections 468 (forgery) and 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence) among other offences.