VARUN SAYS HE HAD NO ACCESS TO DEFENCE INFO

Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi dismissed on Saturday allegations that he leaked defence secrets as “malicious rumours”, saying he was never privy to the information he has been accused of sharing with arms dealers.

In a two-page open letter to “fellow countrymen”, released through social media, he referred to CBI and ED investigations into a related defence deal and said his name never cropped up in the probes.

In a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office last month, US-based lawyer C Edmonds Allen said controversial arms dealer Abhishek Verma honeytrapped and blackmailed Gandhi into sharing sensitive information discussed in defence consultative committee meetings on military deals. The two-time MP said there is “not one grain of truth or shred of evidence” against him and it was unethical to publicly air damaging accusation without being “scrutinised, verified and clarified”.

Gandhi said he never attended a single meeting of the defence consultative committee and had been to very few of the standing committee sittings. Had there been any hidden agenda or motive, he argued, it would have reflected in his attendance.

“…there is never ‘confidential or top secret’ information accessible to such parliamentary panels,” he added. “As a first-time MP of the opposition party, I could not have had any access to any confidential information, far from leaking it”.

He dismissed as “ludicrous” the charge of being blackmailed by Verma and said he did no wrong. Gandhi claimed he never met Allen and it has been many years since he last met Verma, whom he first met while studying in England.

“At no point did we ever discussed work, neither his nor mine,” Gandhi said, adding it appeared that Allen was seeking maximum publicity to his charges against Verma by naming public figures like him. “I have needlessly been sought to be embroiled into a controversy in which I have no part,” he said.