Highlight
- Gujarat SIT said the accused were part of a bigger conspiracy
- Teesta Setalvad’s former aide said she got ’30 lakh rupees’
- BJP has launched a scathing attack on Congress over the affidavit of SIT
A day after the Gujarat SIT probing allegations of fabrication of evidence related to the 2002 riots said the accused were part of a larger conspiracy to destabilize the then state government and that Teesta Setalvad “received Rs 5 lakh in the first instance”. Were”. His former aide Ahmed Patel said the Congress leader “assured him funds from his own party, and from agencies across the country and abroad”. Rais Khan Pathan, a former aide of activist Teesta Setalvad, said when Ahmed Patel, then political advisor to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, called Setalvad after the 2002 Gujarat riots, he went with her.
Pathan said, “After the 2002 Gujarat riots, when Ahmed Patel called Teesta to meet him at the Circuit House for the first time, I tagged along with him. Ahmed Patel told Teesta that he was intrigued by her role in the Babri Masjid riots. Is familiar with.” He said that “first Rs 5 lakh and later Rs 25 lakh were handed over to Setalvad”. He said, “Ahmad Patel had assured Teesta of funds from his party and agencies in the country and abroad. Initially, an amount of Rs 5 lakh was given to Teesta. Later an amount of Rs 25 lakh was handed over to Teesta. ” Told. Pathan had said in a tweet earlier this year that he had quit working with Setalvad due to ethical reasons. “In my past I worked with Teesta Setalvad, the reason I quit working with her was ethics. Now new age fraudsters like Rashid and Ayub are following the same ethics as they pretend to work for the people. But the reality is totally different, Pathan said in a tweet posted in February this year.
Read also | Teesta Setalvad case: Sonia Gandhi worked through Patel to target Modi, says BJP; Congress’s counterattack
The BJP on Saturday launched a scathing attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the affidavit of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the 2002 Gujarat riots case, alleging that she was the “conspirator of the entire conspiracy” and tried to “spoil” the name. had tried. Through his political advisor to the state late Ahmed Patel. The SIT, in its affidavit in the Gujarat sessions court, claimed that Teesta Setalvad and others had hatched a conspiracy at the behest of Ahmed Patel to destabilize the Gujarat government.
Patra said that Setalvad whose name was mentioned in the SIT affidavit that he held several meetings with Patel and received Rs 5 lakh first and Rs 25 lakh after two days, Patra said that he was doing all this with political motives. Was getting it done. “Teesta Setalvad’s first political objective was to destabilize the publicly elected Narendra Modi government in Gujarat. The second objective was to implicate innocent people including the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi. This conspiracy was to malign Gujarat’s image, the affidavit said. was,” he said.
(ANI inputs)
Read also | SIT says Teesta got ₹30 lakh from Ahmed Patel’s Godhra riots to destabilize Gujarat government