Responding to Subramanian Swamy’s accusations over his British nationality, Rahul Gandhi accused PM Modi of mud-slinging and dared the government on Thursday to jail him if he is found guilty.
"They should throw me in jail if they find anything against me. I am not scared, I’ll keep fighting for the weak," he said at Indian Youth Congress’s celebration of 98th birth anniversary of Indira Gandhi in Delhi.
Swamy in response has now demanded a CBI or ED probe into the matter.
"While I do not have complete picture, the material enclosed are of sufficient prima facie value to order an investigation by the CBI/Enforcement Directorate with Mr Rahul Gandhi as the principal accused,” the BJP leader said in a letter to Modi, The Indian Express reported.
Congress has dismissed the accusations saying that Swamy was making such baseless allegations only to stay in the news. The party also said, “if somebody has committed an error while uploading, it can be corrected. It is correctable”.
A British government department, Companies House, has confirmed this. “It could very well be an error made by whoever submitted the information," the government body said.
A private company called Backops has said that Rahul Gandhi’s nationality was shown as ‘British’ in the returns filed by the company for 2005 and 2006 but admitted that it could be a clerical error.
BJP leader Subramaniam Swamy had written to the Prime Minister on Thursday to strip Rahul Gandhi off his Indian citizenship and Lok Sabha membership. He had accused the Congress vice-president of operating the company Backops for defence kickbacks.