Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday alleged that Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi’s wife Elizabeth Colburn has “good relations” with Pakistan Army.
Addressing a press conference, Sarma claimed that Colburn had travelled 19 times between India and Pakistan, and Pakistan Army officials had accompanied her in the neighbouring country.
“She worked in Pakistan and then came to Delhi to work in a non-governmental organisation but continued receiving her salary from Pakistan,” the CM alleged.
Sarma claimed that even Gogoi had visited Pakistan “in personal and not official capacity” and stayed there for 15 days.
The Congress MP, reacting to the CM’s allegations, said that at a ‘time when the entire country is united and supporting the central government in their efforts against Pakistan, the BJP IT cell, including the Assam chief minister is indulging in petty politics’.
‘We want the government to take strong measures against Pakistan and extract a heavy price for the Pahalgam attack’, Gogoi said in a statement.
The CM said, “Gogoi’s wife accompanied him but she returned after seven days, while Gogoi stayed for another seven days. He must explain what he did in Pakistan for 15 days.” “It has to be ascertained what he did in Pakistan and whether he helped their army directly or indirectly. The context of the visit has to be established,” Sarma said.
“Questions are being raised about Prime Minister Narendra Modi going to Pakistan but he had gone there in an official capacity. If Gogoi had gone there as part of an official delegation, we would not have raised questions but he went there in his personal capacity and we would like to know who received him in that country,” he said.
The chief minister claimed that the Special Investigation Team (SIT), inquiring into links between Pakistan national Ali Tauqeer Sheikh and his partners in India, has completed the investigation and “we have evidence that he (Gogoi) had gone through the Wagah-Attari border”.
“We, however, need to complete the statutory provisions to authenticate the data and this requires time. We have already started the process and by September 10, we will complete it,” he added.
Sarma claimed that the SIT had “gone to the necessary places… but there is a procedure to collect the evidence”.
The Congress MP, during a visit to Israel, had reported that he had lost his passport and this has led to “loss of valuable data”, Sarma claimed.
Gogoi, after his return from Pakistan, had also taken 90 youths to the Pakistan embassy and many of them later claimed they were not told beforehand that they were being taken there, Sarma said.
“This was done with the purpose of radicalising the youth,” he alleged.
Following his visit to Pakistan, Gogoi also ‘raised pro-Pakistan questions in Parliament’, Sarma alleged.
‘We want Rahul Gandhi to clarify on the floor of the Parliament whether it is right or wrong for the son of a then sitting chief minister of a state to go to Pakistan. If he says that there is nothing wrong, everything will become crystal clear,” Sarma said without elaborating further.
In his family, only Gogoi is an Indian national and he has surrendered the Indian citizenship of his two children, the CM claimed.
‘The father of the children who is an MP surrendered their citizenship. It is not the children, who are innocent, but their father who surrendered it. I wonder how the children will react when they grow up and realise that they are not a citizen of a country where their grandfather was the chief minister of a state for 15 years,” Sarma said.
This is both ‘morally and legally wrong’, he said.
“After we get the documentary evidence, we will present it to the Prime Minister’s Office and once the case is handed over to a central agency, there will be more space for investigation,” he said.
“The Assam government has limited jurisdiction over the matter and can dig up to a certain point,” he added.
Sarma also claimed that Gogoi had also visited Nepal for seven days in his personal capacity and perhaps ‘a third country from there’.
The CM said that he will also seek an appointment with Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and submit the evidence to him as well.
Asked why he was talking about presenting the evidence by September 10, the CM said, ‘I will produce the proof required to establish this which will require time or else his supporters, including many in the media, will not believe it. We will have to demolish his supporters too.” Gogoi had earlier accused Sarma of indulging in politics by dragging his family, wife and children into the matter.
“The Congress, on the other hand, is doing politics for the people, for poor children and unemployed youth of Assam. The children are not getting textbooks in schools. Poor parents are being compelled to sell their children to smuggling networks due to extreme poverty. The school dropout rate is very high,” he said.
Gogoi had also asked what happened to the probe of the SIT, formed to investigate his and his wife’s alleged Pakistan links, and dared the Assam CM to make the findings public.
The Assam CM has been attacking the Deputy Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha over his wife’s alleged connection with Pakistan’s spy agency ISI.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ’s editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
