4 min readJaipur, New DelhiFeb 19, 2026 06:59 PM IST
First published on: Feb 19, 2026 at 06:54 PM IST
Police in Rajasthan’s Kota on Thursday arrested a man accused of uploading a video threatening to shoot Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other MPs from the party.
According to police, the man in the video, who identified himself as Raj Singh and claimed to be the spokesperson of the Karni Sena’s Kota unit, claimed to be angered by the Congress MPs’ behaviour towards Lok Sabha Speaker and Kota MP Om Birla in Parliament.
In a video, Singh is heard saying that Karni Sena workers were upset over the “several abuses hurled at Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla by 25 Congress MPs during the first part of the recently concluded Parliament session”. He claimed in the video that he had “reasons to believe that all this was done on the orders of Rahul Gandhi”. He is heard issuing a threat in the video, saying that if Rahul Gandhi and the MPs do not “apologise to Om Birla”, then they would be shot in their homes.
After the video surfaced on social media, police in Kota arrested the accused. Kota Superintendent of Police Tejaswini Gautam told The Indian Express that the man was arrested at Borkheda police station and was being questioned in connection with the video.
“We have received a complaint from the Congress leaders of Kota against the man. Under section 170 of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, we have arrested the accused for further investigation. The Karni Sena members of Kota have told us that this man is not their spokesperson and claim they have nothing to do with him,” said Gautam.
Both the BJP and the Karni Sena have denied any connection to the man. BJP Kota city president Rakesh Jain said that the man seen in the video has no affiliation with the party.
National president of Karni Sena, Mahipal Singh Makrana, released the video in which he said the man who threatened Rahul Gandhi and other Congress MPs has nothing to do with Karni Sena.
“As members of Karni Sena, we usually protest against an individual or show black flags. However, threatening to kill someone or attacking someone is not the way our group works. Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi are both respectable figures of the country. We have respect for them and condemn this type of video,” said Makrana.
Congress and other parties have attacked Birla for not allowing Rahul Gandhi to quote from or speak about former Indian Army Chief General M M Naravane’s unpublished memoir, and for Birla’s claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could have been attacked inside the House.
Congress slams the BJP
The Congress hit out at the BJP in connection with the incident.
Senior Congress leader K C Venugopal alleged that “self-proclaimed Modi bhakts” are “brazenly issuing death threats” against Rahul Gandhi “in broad daylight without any reprimand from the ruling regime”.
“This is a direct result of the toxic culture of animosity and vengeance created by the BJP in the national discourse — right from Parliament to political rallies,” Venugopal, the Congress’s general secretary (organisation), said.
He accused the BJP of treating “political opponents as die-hard enemies to be eliminated”. “Their foot soldiers, blinded by hate, are unleashed to intimidate Opposition leaders,” he said.
Asserting that Rahul Gandhi would not be scared by threats, he said, “Rahul ji is from the legacy of Indira Gandhi ji and Rajiv Gandhi ji, and he has given us all the slogan of ‘daro mat’.”
Pawan Khera, the chairman of the Congress’s Media and Publicity Department, alleged that the “RSS-BJP ecosystem is a ‘Godse factory’.”
“The threat issued by the so-called Karni Sena against Rahul Gandhi and the ‘25 Members of Parliament’ is not an isolated outburst. It is part of a calculated and devious plan,” said Khera.
The court had directed Rahul to remain personally present to complete the formalities related to the new surety (File Photo) 
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