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2 min readNew DelhiFeb 24, 2026 03:59 AM IST
Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi. (Express File Photo)
A day after PM Narendra Modi slammed the Congress for turning an international event India AI Impact Summit into a venue of its “gandi aur nangi (dirty and shameless)” politics after the Youth Congress’s shirtless protest, Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi hit back saying that the PM has been having “sleepless nights” thinking about the consequences of the case against industrialist Gautam Adani in the US.
Referring to India-US trade deal, Gandhi, in a video statement, alleged it was “shameful” “the way India was sold to the US”. “What you have done with the US is shameful. You have sold the country. The trade deal with the US resulted in India getting nothing… You have sold our data, finished our farmers, ruined our textile industry. This is shameful. The second shameful thing is Epstein who is a paedophile. In his files and emails, your name, your ministers’ names, your friends’ names are coming. This is the second shameful thing,” said Gandhi.
Targeting the PM over fiasco during the first leg of Budget Session over the unpublished memoir of former Army Chief M M Naravane, Gandhi said, “He couldn’t come to Parliament and the reason wasn’t Naravane. The reason was Epstein (files) and the case against (Gautam) Adani.” The third “shameful” thing, he claimed, was case against Adani. “The whole country knows it’s not against Adani, but is a case against BJP and your financial architecture.”
BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said Gandhi was “a perennial anti-India liar” and asserted “there was no verified document, court record, or official investigation that names” Modi “in any Epstein-related case”. He claimed India-US trade volume had grown from around $74 billion in 2014 to over $190 billion in recent years.
Asad Rehman is with the national bureau of The Indian Express and covers politics and policy focusing on religious minorities in India. A journalist for over eight years, Rehman moved to this role after covering Uttar Pradesh for five years for The Indian Express. During his time in Uttar Pradesh, he covered politics, crime, health, and human rights among other issues. He did extensive ground reports and covered the protests against the new citizenship law during which many were killed in the state. During the Covid pandemic, he did extensive ground reporting on the migration of workers from the metropolitan cities to villages in Uttar Pradesh. He has also covered some landmark litigations, including the Babri Masjid-Ram temple case and the ongoing Gyanvapi-Kashi Vishwanath temple dispute. Prior to that, he worked on The Indian Express national desk for three years where he was a copy editor. Rehman studied at La Martiniere, Lucknow and then went on to do a bachelor's degree in History from Ramjas College, Delhi University. He also has a Masters degree from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. ... Read More
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