Amid United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s India visit and a purported photo of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri meeting convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein coming to the fore, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday asked which “anti-national traitor” the US was “blackmailing”.
Puri has faced a controversy since early this year after his name had come up in the “Epstein files”.
The “Epstein files” refer to millions of documents, emails, photos and videos released by the US Department of Justice detailing the activities of Epstein, an American financier, and his social circle that included politicians, celebrities and several public figures.
A set of documents released on January 30 contained email exchanges between Puri and Epstein that began in June 2014.
The old photo of Puri and Epstein widely shared on social media on Tuesday was part of the documents released by the US justice department in January.
Puri has said that his conversations with Epstein had nothing to do with the crimes for which the American financier had been convicted.
In a social media post, Gandhi said that Rubio had travelled to Mumbai and the US justice department had “released” a picture of Puri and Epstein.
The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha asked workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, “which...