Allegations against Ahmed Patel mischievous, manufactured: Congress on Gujarat police claims

New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday said the "mischievous" and "manufactured" allegations by the Gujarat Police's against its late leader Ahmed Patel was part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "systematic strategy" to absolve himself of any responsibility for the communal carnage back then.

The Congress' rebuttal came after the Gujarat Police on Friday opposed activist Teesta Setalvad's bail application. In an affidavit before the sessions court, the Special Investigation Team claimed she was part of a "larger conspiracy" carried out at the behest of late Congress leader Patel to get the BJP government in the state dismissed after the 2002 riots.

In a statement, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said the party "categorically refutes the mischievous charges manufactured" against the late Ahmed Patel.

"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," he said.

"It was his (Modi's) unwillingness and incapacity to control this carnage that had led the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to remind the chief minister of his 'raj dharma'." The prime minister's "political vendetta machine" clearly does not even spare the departed who were his political adversaries, the Congress general secretary said.

"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," Ramesh said.

He said 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.

"This is nothing but another example of the same with the added object of vilifying a deceased person since he is unable and unavailable to refute such brazen lies," Ramesh said.