Khurshid calls Modi ‘nursery child’ over clean chit claim in 2002 riots

The External Affairs Minister’s comments came two days after Rahul Gandhi dismissed the talk of a clean chit to the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Kicking up a fresh controversy, Union minister Salman Khurshid has compared Narendra Modi to a “nursery child” over claims he has been given a “clean chit” by a lower court in 2002 Gujarat riots.

Khurshid, sitting MP from Farukkhabad, targeted the BJP PM candidate again, days after he triggered a row by calling Modi “impotent” for not being able to stop the riots.

“I don’t know who has given Modi a clean chit. A magistrate’s court has not summoned him…. It is true. It’s like a nursery child getting a good grade and thinking that he has become a doctor and goes around claiming to be a PhD. How can that happen?” he told reporters here on Tuesday in reply to a question.

The External Affairs Minister’s comments came two days after Rahul Gandhi dismissed the talk of a clean chit to the Gujarat Chief Minister.

Modi and BJP leaders have claimed that the verdict by an Ahmedabad court in a 2002 riots case was a “clean chit” for him. Khurshid also said, “In Gujarat, the incidents that happened when he (Modi) was Chief Minister, around 170 people have been given life imprisonment in connection with that. Maya Kodnani was his minister.”

The BJP slammed Khurshid for his remarks, calling it “rubbish”. “He is denigrating the court. What is lower and higher judiciary?,” BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar asked.