Congress seeks answers over ‘missing’ Epstein files

The Congress on Monday (February 9, 2026) alleged that documents related to India on the “Epstein files” had “disappeared” from the search results of the U.S. Department of Justice website. The Opposition party sought an explanation from the Union government, linking the development to the recently concluded trade agreement framework with the U.S.

There was no immediate response from the government or the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) to the principal Opposition party’s allegations.

In a series of posts on social media platform X, Congress leader Pawan Khera claimed that a search for the word “India” in the documents on February 6 returned 484 pages of results, with 10 documents on each page. A team had been “sifting through” the pages and cataloguing documents of interest, he said.

A fresh search now showed only 478 pages, suggesting that six pages, or around 60 files, had been removed from the results, Mr. Khera alleged.

“The only development that took place in between is the one-sided, pro-U.S. trade deal,” Mr. Khera said, adding, “Was an anti-India trade deal the price paid to make scandalous material disappear? Did the government trade away India’s interests just to rescue its rapidly collapsing reputation?”

He also criticised the BJP for its “silence” on the issue, asking what the ruling party was “trying to hide”.

In a subsequent post, Mr. Khera alleged that search results linked to the “International Peace Institute” and “Joshua Fink” were also disappearing. The New York-based International Peace Institute was the organisation where Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri worked after retiring from the Indian Foreign Service. The institute received funds from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Mr. Khera said.

Epstein died in prison in 2019.

Mr. Khera also said Joshua Fink was the son of BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink, adding that the investment firm had invested in the Adani Group’s bond offerings.

“These developments raise troubling questions. What are they so desperate to hide?” Mr. Khera said, alleging that India’s interests had been compromised to “save” the Prime Minister and his associates.