Ravi Shankar Prasad slams Congress, Left after SC upholds clean chit to PM Modi

‘Those who run their shops with the help of Congress and some parties got a setback from the Supreme Court today, the truth is in front of the country,’ said former union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

HT Correspondent

Ravi Shankar Prasad accused the Congress and Left parties of running a cottage industry of vengeance against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (File Photo/PTI)

Former union minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday slammed the Congress and Left parties after the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given by the court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) to the then chief minister Narendra Modi and others while ruling out a larger conspiracy behind the 2002 Gujarat riots.

After going through former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri’s wife Zakia Jafri’s 67-page complaint and the SIT response on each of the 32 allegations contained in it, the Supreme Court bench of justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar found the appeal to be devoid of merits and upheld the report by SIT that found the evidence produced by Zakia Jafri to be either false, lacking corroboration, or not sufficient to show meeting of minds for proving criminal conspiracy.

“Today a decision of the Supreme Court has come. Zakia Jafri had made a case that there should be an investigation on the role of Narendra Modi in the Gujarat riots. Those who run their shops with the help of Congress and some parties got a setback from the Supreme Court today, the truth is in front of the country,” said Prasad, addressing media at the BJP office in Patna.

Taking a dig at the Congress over the daily protests organised during the Enforcement Directorate (ED) questioning of Rahul Gandhi, the Patna Sahib MP recalled how the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi was grilled for 9 hours by SIT about the 2002 Gujarat riots and still no BJP worker ever protested against it. “But all Congress leaders including chief minsters of Congress-ruled states like Bhupesh Baghel and Ashok Gehlot were staging protests in the national capital when their leader was questioned,” he said.

“Today we want to ask Congress, Left and others that your entire shop which was running on the protests against Narendra Modi Ji for the last 20 years, now how many more days will you run? These people were running a cottage industry of vengeance against Narendra Modi,” he said, adding, “An attempt was made to look at the Gujarat riots through a political lens. Actually, the Left gang was behind the PM.”