Home Ministry distances itself from Rahul Gandhi’s ISI remarks

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: After facing flak from almost all quarters, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi now appears to be losing support of his own government over his remarks on ISI allegedly approaching Muzaffarnagar riots victims. Highly-placed sources on Saturday told Zee Media that the Home Ministry has nothing to do with the remarks. Sources said the MHA did not pass on any such information to the Uttar Pradesh government that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence had approached victims of the recent Muzaffarnagar riots for recruitment in terror modules. The UP government, too, was not aware of any such intelligence inputs, sources added. Addressing a rally in Indore earlier this week, Rahul Gandhi had claimed that Pakistani intelligence agencies were trying to lure some victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots into joining terror. The Congress scion had claimed that the information had been given to him by an intelligence official that the ISI had established contact with a group of 10-15 Muslim youngsters, whose kin were killed in the riots. Apart from sources in the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Uttar Pradesh Home Secretary Kamal Saxena too had denied any such development. Apart from major political parties including the main opposition BJP, Muslim clerics have also dubbed the remarks as “most unfortunate”. Narendra Modi, BJP’s PM candidate for 2014 General Elections, has demanded that Rahul reveal the names of the Muslim youth approached by the ISI.