Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday warned Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera of action over allegations against his wife, Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, claiming Assam Police can track people down “even from paatal (netherworld).”
For levelling allegations against his wife, Sarma said, police will hunt down Khera to ask him who provided him with documents he used for the allegations. Sarma said the papers are false.
Sarma also hit out at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for backing the claims without verification, saying “Kharge ji has aged, yet he speaks like a madman.”
“Before levelling an allegation, he should have asked the foreign minister,” Himanta said about Kharge.
Sarma’s remarks come after allegations that his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma holds three passports and owns undisclosed luxury properties.
Sarma alleges Rahul Gandhi gave documents
Assam CM also suspected that the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, gave the documents, referring to the papers shown by Pawan Khera in support of their claims about Sarma’s wife.
“This case will extend to Rahul Gandhi,” Sarma said.
He warned the Congress against trying to scare him: “This is Assam, and we have fought against Islamic invasion 17 times,” he said, making an apparently unrelated religious reference.
CM Sarma has alleged that Pawan Khera “ran away” to Hyderabad from New Delhi, following Assam Police searches at his residence in the national capital, amidst the ongoing passport row.
Also read: Sarma accuses Cong of using Pak-linked group’s docs to forge his wife’s passports
Congress chief says agencies probing charges
Earlier in the day, Mallikarjun Kharge spoke about the allegations, saying that all agencies are under the central government, which should probe the charges.
“They have already filed an FIR against Khera. Let them probe the matter,” he said.
Addressing a press meet in Guwahati, Kharge described Sarma as the “most corrupt” in India.
Jairam Ramesh says Sarma ‘disturbed, desperate.’
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh also spoke about the allegations on Tuesday, terming Assam CM as “disturbed, desperate, and rattled” following the arrival of an Assam Police team at the Delhi residence of Pawan Khera on Tuesday.
In an X post, he criticised deployment of police officials outside Pawan Khera’s residence, calling the action a “witch hunt” of a “bully” using state machinery to “muzzle and silence the voice of the Opposition that is exposing his many black deeds.”
“The deployment of a full army of police officials to arrest my colleague Pawan Khera for asking basic questions in the public interest proves that the Assam CM is disturbed, desperate, and rattled,” he wrote in the post.
On Sunday, Congress held press conferences, where Pawan Khera and Assam unit chief Gaurav Gogoi, alleged that Sarma’s wife has passports of India, the UAE, and Egypt. They further claimed that she owns undisclosed property in Dubai and a company in Wyoming, USA.
Sarma rejected these claims, labelling the documents shared by Khera as “AI-generated fabrications” and “doctored images sourced from Pakistani social media groups”.