Rahul calls Amit Shah ‘murder accused’, stirs row

Bhopal, April 23 (IANS) Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday sparked a political controversy by referring to his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) counterpart Amit Shah as a "murder accused" during an election rally in Jabalpur.

The Congress President also took a dig at Shah's son Jay Shah by calling him a "magician."

"Murder accused BJP President Amit Shah....waah! kya shaan hai....Have you heard Jay Shah's name? He is a magician, he made Rs 50,000 into Rs 80 crore in 3 months," Gandhi said in an apparent reference to the alleged disproportionate assets case against Amit Shah's son.

The comments came on a day when the Supreme Court slapped a contempt notice on the Congress President for wrongly attributing his remark on the Rafale deal to the top court.

This is not the first time that Gandhi has referred to Shah as a "murder accused."

Last month the BJP had filed a complaint with the Chief Electoral Officer of Tripura against Gandhi for allegedly referring to Shah as a "murder accused" at a rally in Khumulwng in Tripura.

In May 2018, in an apparent reference to the accusation that Shah once faced for his alleged involvement in the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in 2005, Gandhi had said: "People in India forget that the President of BJP is a murder accused. That's the truth. The party that talks about honesty and decency has a person who has been accused of murder as President."

Shah was discharged in the case in 2014. In 2016, the apex court also turned down demands that the BJP President be probed again.