Assassination tweet: Gadkari mulls legal suit

Union minister Nitin Gadkari has been dragged into an unsavoury controversy. In fact, he is livid and rightly so; he is also threatening legal action against former JNU students' union vice president Shehla Rashid after the latter alleged his complicity in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Besides Gadkari, Rashid also levelled an allegation against the RSS and alleged that the motive was to blame the ‘assassination’ on Muslims and Communists.

The shocking tweet had said: “Looks like RSS/ Gadkari is planning to assassinate Modi, and then blame it upon Muslims/ Communists and then lynch Muslims #RajivGandhiStyle.”

Hours later, Gadkari, without naming Rashid,

said he would take legal action against “anti-social elements”. “I would be taking legal action against anti-social elements who have made bizarre comments; attributing personal motives to me, regarding the assassination threat to PM Narendra Modi,” he tweeted.

Hitting back, Rashid said the “leader of the world’s biggest political party was getting worked up about a sarcastic tweet” and questioned whether Gadkari would take action against a media house for targeting fellow JNU activist Umar Khalid.

Rashid’s allegations follow the seizure of a letter by Pune police from the residence of a person arrested for alleged Maoist links. The letter purportedly talks about a "Rajiv Gandhi-type incident" targeting Modi during one of his road shows.