P Chidambaram criticises allegations against Ahmed Patel over 2002 Gujarat riots

|HT|

Congress leader P Chidambaram has slammed the allegations against Ahmed Patel, whose name has emerged in an affidavit submitted by the Special Investigation Team on 2002 Gujarat riots. The affidavit, naming Patel, the Congress veteran who died in November, 2020, has sparked a major political controversy. "To accuse Ahmed Patel of conspiracy 20 months after his death is part of a vendetta against a political opponent. To allege that Ahmed Patel acted at the instance of Smt Sonia Gandhi is vile and vengeful. The Special Investigation Team appears to be a Specially Instructed Team (sic)," P Chidambaram tweeted on Saturday.

In its affidavit, the SIT said that activist Teesta Salvad - who was recently arrested - was enacting a larger conspiracy to destabilise an elected Gujarat government soon after a train in Godhra was set on fire in 2002. She had received financial assistance from Ahmed Patel, it further added. The affidavit was submitted before a court in Ahmedabad on Friday.

Patel, who had died after getting infected with coronavirus, was said to be close to the Gandhis. As his name emerged, the BJP accused Congress chief Sonia Gandhi of attempting to “malign” the name of the state through her former political advisor. The ruling parry also alleged that Sonia Gandhi was the “driving force behind the conspiracy” to destabilise the Gujarat government.

“The reality has been revealed in the affidavit today that there was a conspiracy but who were the ones that were driving these conspiracies? It was Ahmed Patel, the former Rajya Sabha MP and former chief political advisor to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi,” Sambit Patra said at a press conference.

The Congress, however, claimed the charges levelled against Patel were part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “systematic strategy to absolve himself of any responsibility for communal carnage” that was unleashed during his term as chief minister of Gujarat. Amid the political row, his daughter, in a tweet, said the Congress veteran’s name continues to “hold weight” even after his death to be used for “political conspiracies”.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)