Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera, on Sunday, 10 March held a press conference on The Telegraph, UK’s video that saw fugitive businessman Nirav Modi roaming freely on the streets of London.
The Congress accused the BJP of knowing of Nirav Modi’s wrongdoings whereabouts since as early as 2015.
Before the press conference, the party had tweeted to the ruling BJP, saying that “allegations without an iota of proof are its(the BJP’s) thing, further saying that Congress, on the other hand, had facts” to prove that PM Modi allowed both Nirav Modi and his accomplice Mehul Choksi to “loot and scoot.”
In a series of tweets, the Congress party laid out the alleged sequence of events.
It said that the CBI complaint records show that the fraudulent LOUs were issued or renewed between 2017 - 2018, citing an Indian Express report.
On 7 May, the Congress said that petitioner Vaibhav Khuraniya wrote to the Corporate Affairs Ministry and the Serious Frauds Investigation Office on how Mehul Choksi and his company, Gitanjali diamonds was defaulting on loans to banks like PNB and ICICI bank. The party attached the letter to its tweet:
On 5 November 2015, the Congress said that PM Modi hosted Mehul Choksi at his residence and referred to him as “Mehul bhai”, it also tweeted the video of PM Modi referring to Mehul Choksi during the gathering.
Further giving meat to its allegations, the party said that on 26 July 2016, a whistleblower by the name of Hari Prasad wrote to the PMO, alerting them about the PNB scam and warning of the perpetrators escape. However, the image posted by Congress shows the sending date as 29 July while the date of receipt on the same letter reads 26 July.
The letter was sent to the Registrar Of Companies, Maharashtra as well, that wrote back saying the case was closed.
“On 29 January 2018, the DGM of PNBs Zonal Office wrote to the Joint Director of the CBI, requesting him to take out a look-out notice for Nirav Modi that, so that he is not able to leave the country.”
Congress also tweeted PM Modi’s group picture at the 2018 Davos Sumit, which featured Nirav Modi as well.
It said that the CBI finally filed a case on 31 January, saying that “this is precisely how Modi’s ‘Gujarat Model’ functions.”
The party also tweeted out its 23 February 2018 press release on the whole PNB scam at the end of the twitter thread.
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