Nov 22, 2007, 12:44 GMT
Lucknow, Nov 22 (IANS) Do Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's political rivals want him to keep away from Uttar Pradesh? The question has been raised after an Intelligence Bureau (IB) sleuth has debunked the state police's theory that terrorists had hatched a conspiracy to kidnap him.
The IB's clarification came within a week of the arrest of three Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists here by the police, which then had hinted that the trio was hatching a conspiracy to abduct Congress president Sonia Gandhi's parliamentarian son.
'I fail to understand how the Uttar Pradesh cops jumped to their own conclusions within hours of the terrorists' arrest on Nov 16,' a senior IB official told select mediapersons on condition of anonymity.
He saw 'political expediency rather than merit' behind the kidnap theory.
The IB official's observation gave credence to the talk in the Congress camp that the police theory had been 'planted' to frustrate the young leader's plans to concentrate on rebuilding the party in the state where it had been down in the dumps for almost 18 years after having ruled for four decades.
Barely a few days before the arrests, Rahul Gandhi, who represents the Amethi constituency in the Lok Sabha, had declared at a press conference at the state Congress committee headquarters here that he would devote his energies to revive the Congress in the state.
State police chief Vikram Singh clarified, 'We never made this announcement about Gandhi being a target of the terrorists. We simply maintained that they had plans to abduct some Uttar Pradesh-based VVIP politician. The part about Gandhi was added by the media.'
Asked about on-camera confession of the trio telecast by a TV channel a day after their arrests Friday in which they spoke in detail about a plan to abduct Gandhi, Singh said: 'We would not like to be guided by such confessions either. For all you know, the terrorists might have given out certain names to confuse investigating agencies.'
© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service
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