PM does not have courage to sit in the house and face our questions: Rahul Gandhi

"Prime Minister Modiji does not have the courage to sit in the house and face our questions," Gandhi said in the Parliament as he attacked the PM on his silence on the controversies.

"IPL is the centre of Kala Dhan in India. Lalit Modi is a symbol of Black Money in the country," he said.

Hitting out further, the Congress VP said: "Gandhiji had three monkeys - don't see evil, don't hear evil and don't speak evil. Modiji on the other hand has new types of monkeys which preach- don't see the truth, don't hear the truth and don't speak the truth."

"Prime Minister, the country wants to know from you why Lalit Modi is being saved," he said.

Targeting External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, he said: " She is the first humanitarian in the world who does her works silently."

Amid a din in Parliament by Congress members, Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday said she did no wrong by helping tainted cricket administrator and former Indian Premier League (IPL) boss Lalit Modi who allegedly travelled out of the UK, where he is based now, at the intervention of Swaraj.

She said: "I have done nothing wrong," even as the belligerent  Congress MPs shouted slogans and ruled out her defence as unacceptable.

She said she is in politics for 38 years and there never was any aspersion of any wrongdoing against her.

In an offensive against Congress, Swaraj also attacked the party as she told Rahul Gandhi to "read Congress's history from helping Ottavio Quattrocchi to Warren Anderson and then ask question to your mother. 'Mumma, papa ne Quattrocchi ko kyu chudaya'." She said it was Rajiv Gandhi government which had helped Quattrocchi in the Bofors case after Rahul Gandhi accused Swaraj of helping a fugitive (Lalit Modi).

She said Rajiv Gandhi secretively helped Bhopal gas leak accused Warren Anderson escape India.

Swaraj chose to attack Congress and the Gandhi family over the issue of Anderson and Quattrocchi.

Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said  Swaraj should be heard but the Opposition stuck to its demand for her resignation as a debate on "Lalitgate scandal" finally began in Parliament on the penultimate day of its Monsoon session on Wednesdayafter External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj accepted the opposition's challenge calling for a discussion on the controversy that has virtually kept paralysed Parliament for more than three weeks.

Initiating the debate, Congress party's floor leader Mallikarjun Kharge ripped into the government's role in the scandal reiterating that the External Affairs Minister should step down on moral ground.

" Lalit Modi has never prioritised his wife's illness when he applied for visa. It was always mentioned as the second or third reason," Kharge said as he sought to break Swaraj's defence that whatever she had done  on "humanitarian ground" was for the sake of Modi's wife, a cancer patient who wanted to be with her husband.

Khagre alleged that Swaraj's family were lawyers in Lalit Modi case and "that's why he was protected."

"The Finance Minister also never initiated an inquiry despite knowing Lalit Modi's economic offence," he said.

Earlier, the Congress  asked that the House to  suspend all scheduled business to discuss the charges against the External Affairs Minister, who urged Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to sanction the request of adjournment motion.

The Congress-led opposition has been doggedly demanding Swaraj's resignation on the ground that she helped out Lalit Modi to get travel documents in the UK.

However, the Congress demanded that the Prime Minister must be present when Swaraj makes her statement.

Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi also spoke over the issue and called it a serious matter since the entire world looks up to Indian democracy and freedom.

Lalit Modi left the country in 2010 amid controversies over a series of corruption charges against him. Last year he was  allowed to accompany his wife from London to a hospital in Portugal.

Swaraj has been accused of helping him get travel documents in the UK though the External Affairs Minister said the only role she played was in informing the UK government that if it chose to give him travel documents, relations with India would not be affected.