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The Congress stood firmly behind former finance minister P Chidambaram who is in CBI custody in the INX media case.
The party said the country witnessed, in broad daylight, the murder of democracy in the last two days. The party maintained that the Centre is hell bent upon using CBI and ED as personal revenge-seeking departments for the BJP.
The party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the “vindictive, selective and malicious” manner in which Chidambaram has been “persecuted and prosecuted” is nothing short of a brazen, personal and political vendetta by Narendra Modi government.
Plunging economy
“With the narrative on a sinking economy spiralling out of their control, massive and unprecedented job losses, shocking devaluation of the rupee as Asia’s worst performing currency and unfathomable crisis in all sectors of the economy, leading to the shutting down of factories, business and trade, we now see the depths to which a desperate BJP government will stoop to divert the attention of the country and its people,” he told reporters at a press conference here on Thursday.
He alleged that certain news channels are working as BJP’s propaganda machinery and worked desperately to churn out falsehoods, fake news and outright lies. Surjewala said that the case is 12 years old and claimed that neither have those who gave the FIPB permission been arrested, nor the company which has committed the crime.
He said the Centre rather decided to arrest a seasoned politician on the statement of “a jailed woman, who is being charged of murdering her own daughter”.
‘No chargesheet filed’
“Neither Chidambaram nor his son, have been accused of any offence in the INX Media case. Additionally, there is no offence disclosed against Chidambaram in the FIR nor a charge sheet has been filed till today,” he said. “Can the authorities answer and place before the public after aphoristic spectacle that they made of the arrest. The nature of the charges against Chidambaram instead of engaging in a media trial through some selective news channels is to character assassinate him,” he said.
Later, addressing a function to celebrate the 75th birth anniversary of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, party President Sonia Gandhi said that despite having a majority in Parliament, the former prime minister was careful to not to use power to terrorise people.
“He did not use power to suppress the liberty of people. He did not use power to create dangers in the democratic traditions of the country,” she said. She added that despite being the largest party after 1989 elections, he followed his conscience and decided not to make any claims to form government.
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