Mumbai, Jun 12 (NIE): A day after NCP chief Sharad Pawar raised a question mark over the alleged plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Congress too joined the pitch. On Tuesday, Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam said the entire assassination plot had been a farce. “The BJP knows that it is fast losing popularity and support among the masses. This seems to be nothing but a plot to garner sympathy for Narendra Modi,” Nirupam said.

The Pune Police had on Friday informed a court that they had recovered a threat letter from Rona Wilson, one of the five people arrested from Mumbai, Nagpur and Delhi in connection with ‘Elgar Parishad’ held in Pune in December and the subsequent Bhima-Koregaon violence in the district. It had claimed that a plot to assassinate the PM in a “Rajiv Gandhi-type incident” had been revealed by it. But Nirupam on Monday claimed that the recovered letter was unsigned. “The police is yet to clarify on how they recovered the letter. Was it in the form of a written letter, a printed page, or was is recovered from a hard disk,” asked Nirupam. He also questioned that the “ease with which the threat letter was accessed by the media.”

On Sunday, speaking at a rally, Pawar also took a sharp dig at the BJP over the issue. “The BJP has realised that they are losing popular support. In order to gain sympathy, the BJP is now playing the threat letter card. However, I am sure that the people will not fall prey to such tactics.” Pawar’s comment had drawn a sharp reaction from the BJP with CM Devendra Fadnavis hitting out at the veteran leader saying he did not expect Mr Pawar to to “stoop down to this level”.

Mounting a further offensive, Nirupam recounted how nothing had come out of investigations in similarly alleged plots when Modi was still the Gujarat CM. He also questioned if the entire controversy was nothing but a plot to divert attention from the probe into the Bhima Koregaon violence, where “those close to the RSS and the BJP” had been named as accused.