Kapil Sibal hits back at Sushma Swaraj for 'tangentially' referring to him

NEW DELHI: The political slugfest between BJP and Congress over the alleged sexual assault involving former Tehelka magazine editor Tarun Tejpal has taken a shriller turn.

Hours after BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said on Wednesday morning that a Union minister was shielding Tejpal, Law Minister Kapil Sibal dared her to name the minister and denied owning any share in Tehelka magazine.

“Union Cabinet Minister who is the founder and patron of Tehelka is shielding Tarun Tejpal,” Swaraj had tweeted, without naming Sibal. Sibal struck back and accused the BJP of targeting him for attacking its prime ministerial face Narendra Modi.

“The person who says I’m shielding Tejpal should have the courage to name me. I have been attacking Modi, so the BJP is targeting me and my family,” he said. Sibal also hit back at Swaraj saying he wondered who protected the Reddy brothers accused of illegal mining in Bellary in Karnataka. He also dared the leader of the opposition to name him openly if she had the courage.

Other BJP leaders refrained from commenting on Swaraj’s tweet but refuted allegations of a political conspiracy against Tejpal. BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Congress leaders had raised the Gujarat snooping case but were “silent” on the Tehelka issue.

In Panaji, Goa CM Manohar Parrikar said the Tehelka sexual assault case was not determined by political considerations, saying there was no pressure on police to take action. “The BJP is not involved in the matter. For a person who has committed a crime, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a BJP government or a Congress government,” he said.

Sibal, meanwhile, emphatically denied being a shareholder in Tehelka and termed such talk as a RSS propaganda. “Forget 80%, I don’t even have one share in Tehelka. I never had,” he said.

The minister said: “There is a message going around in the social media which says that Tarun Tejpal is the son of a Punjab Congress Committee member and an MLA. I don’t know... Then it says his mother is the real sister of Kapil Sibal. Now, I am sorry, I did not expect the RSS and the BJP to stoop to this level. They can attack me politically, but they should not bring my family into it,” he told reporters here. Sibal said his only sister, Asha Nanda, lived in Maharani Bagh in Delhi.