Nitin Gadkari slams ex- student leader over 'bizarre' tweet, threatens legal action

Gadkari made the remark on Twitter after former JNU students' union president Shehla Rashid's tweet accused the former BJP chief and Rashtriya Swayamsvak Sangh or RSS of being involved in the plan.

Rashid had tweeted: "Looks like RSS/Gadkari is planning to assassinate Modi, and then blame it upon Muslims/Communists and then lynch Muslims #RajivGandhiStyle."

In a sensational development,  a letter, claimed to have been  found in the house of a person arrested for having links with the banned CPI (Maoist) has  allegedly revealed a plan to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi in "another Rajiv Gandhi type" incident, media reports said.

Pune Police intercepted the internal communication of Maoists planning a 'Rajiv Gandhi type' assassination of Prime Minister Modi, the news agency ANI reported.

Earlier on Wednesday, Dalit activist Sudhir Dhawale, lawyer Surendra Gadling, activist Mahesh Raut, Nagpur University professor Shoma Sen and Rona Wilson were arrested in connection with 'Elgar Parishad' and the subsequent Bhima-Koregaon violence, that took place in Pune.

All five were produced before the sessions court on Thursday which remanded them in police custody till June 14.

Going by the letter found in Rona Wilson's house in Delhi, "Modi-led Hindu fascist regime" is "bulldozing its way into the lives of indigenous Adivasis."

News agency ANI has published a copy of the letter.

The message does not explicitly say the plan is to assassinate Modi, but its implication is clear.

"In spite of big defeats like Bihar and West Bengal, Modi has successfully established BJP gov[ernmen]t[s] in more than 15 states. If this pace continues, then it would mean immense trouble for the party on all fronts. Greater suppression of dissent and more brutal form of Mission 2016 (OGH)," the letter says.

"Targeting his road shows could be an effective strategy," the letter says. "We collectively believe that [the] survival of the party is supreme to all sacrifices. Rest in the next letter."
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Rajiv Gandhi, India's sixth prime minister, was killed in 1991 in Sriperambudur, a town in Tamil Nadu, by a suicide bomber. He was scheduled to address an election rally.

Raising doubts over the Pune police’s findings, the Congress party on Friday said it Modi’s old tactics to plant stories like this.

“I am not saying this is completely untrue but it has been PM Modi’s old tactic since he was chief minister. Whenever his popularity declines, news of an assassination plot is planted. So it should be probed how much truth is in it this time,” said Sanjay Nirupam.