NEW DELHI: Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Saturday drew flak and a police complaint by the BJP for a “provocative” tweet ostensibly aimed at the Sikh community even as he claimed his account was hacked.
Chowdhury, who is the Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, stirred controversy after he tweeted a picture to pay tributes to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on his death anniversary.
Chowdhury put out the infamous remark by Rajiv Gandhi made during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots: “When a big tree falls, ground shakes”.
The tweet was later deleted and the Congress leader filed a police complaint alleging that his Twitter account was hacked.
In a series of tweets later, he distanced himself from the controversial tweet stating that he had the post had “nothing to do with my own observation”. “A malicious campaign is propagated by those forces inimical to me,” he said.
In his police complaint, Chowdhury claimed that an “unscrupulous, biased and content tainted with absolute malafied” was posted on his Twitter account when he was busy with the party programme on the dias and did not carry his phone.
He claimed, “The contents posted smacks of malice and I believe that my Twitter handle had been hacked by some wrong doers for the reasons best know to them.”
But his clarifications and police complaint could not save him from the BJP’s ire. Manjinder Singh Sirsa, a prominent Sikh figure and BJP leader, filed a complaint with Delhi’s North Avenue police station against him for “provoking Sikhs” by “projecting Rajiv Gandhi as the hero of mass killing of innocent Sikhs”.
The former prime minister was assassinated on May 21, 1991 when he was in Tamil Nadu to address a public meeting.