Rahul’s corruption charges against Modi fall flat; documents declared ‘zero’ by SC

The documents which Rahul Gandhi cited to accuse Narendra Modi's involvement in corruption were earlier declared as unauthentic by the Supreme Court.

Updated: Thursday, December 22, 2016, 10:56 [IST]

New Delhi, Dec 22: On Wednesday, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of corruption and said that the PM had taken money from the Sahara and Birla groups when he was the chief minister of Gujarat.

[Also Read: Modi had taken money from Sahara, Birla groups: Rahul]

Rahul was referring to documents that were seized by the Income Tax Department which the Supreme Court had on an earlier occasion had termed 'not authentic'.

It may be recalled that a petition had been filed by advocate Prashant Bhushan in which he accused Modi and other politicians of receiving money from corporate houses. While hearing the matter on November 25, the bench comprising Justice JS Khehar and Arun Mishra had termed the documents produced as 'not credible enough'.

Documents not credible:

The bench, while directing the petitioner to furnish credible evidence to substantiate the allegations also asked if he was relying on Sahara's documents. "Are you relying on Sahara's documents? They never have genuine documents," the bench observed.

The petitioner said that the Sahara documents had cited a huge cash amount which was given to the Gujarat CM in October and November, 2013.

"Your documents do not arouse our conscience. Any corrupt person can make an entry in the name of the prime minister and this cannot be treated as credible evidence," the bench added.

"Something authentic must be placed before us. These documents seized from the premises of Birla and Sahara are nothing. These are zero," the Supreme Court observed, while granting the petitioner time to place credible evidence before it.

The matter had come up on December 16 and during the course of the hearing, the petitioner asked if it was right for Justice Khehar to hear the matter. The bench took a serious note of this comment and adjourned hearing on the matter to January 11.

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