‘Soldiers died, and PM posed for camera in national park’: Rahul Gandhi

Tirupati, Feb 22: In a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday said 40 soldiers were killed in a terror attack but "the nationalist prime minister was sitting in a national park" smiling for the camera.

Gandhi alleged that PM Modi did not cut short his programme to inquire about the Pulwama terror attack and express solidarity with the families of the martyrs.

He said, "Today in India, there are some people who call themselves nationalists but when 40 of our CRPF jawans were martyred...When the blood was still flowing, the Prime Minister of India, who calls himself a nationalist was sitting in a national park getting a movie made of himself."

Gandhi was referring to reported shooting of a movie on PM Modi in the Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand.

Earlier in the day, the Congress president had said the "prime time minister" continued shooting for a film till even three hours after news of the Pulwama terror strike came in.

There was an ocean of pain in the country's heart and in the homes of martyrs and he was smiling and doing a photoshoot in the waters, Gandhi said on Twitter with the hashtag 'PhotoShootSarkar'.

"Even after three hours of the news of the 40 jawans being martyred in the Pulwama terror strike, the prime time minister continued with a film shooting," the Congress president tweeted in Hindi.

On Thursday, the Congress cited media reports to allege that Modi continued shooting for a film in the Corbett National Park on February 14 for "self propagation", and stayed put till the evening despite the attack on a CRPF convoy in south Kashmir's Pulwama district in the afternoon that day.

Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala, addressing a press conference, also claimed the prime minister continued to "have tea and samosas at seven o'clock in a PWD guest house when every single Indian household didn't eat food (that day)".