RJD supremo Lalu Prasad on Thursday hit back at Nitin Gadkari for his derogatory remarks against him and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav for not supporting the cut motions in the Lok Sabha, saying the BJP President has gone "mentally bankrupt".
"We will first try to give Gadkari tablets to cure his mental bankruptcy, then put him on capsules and if the tablets and capsules fail, we will put him on injection," Prasad told a press conference here.
On Gadkari criticising the SP, RJD and BSP for not backing the NDA during the cut motions, alleging that they did so out of fear of the CBI, Prasad countered that Gadkari was spearheading a campaign against the CBI to save several leaders of his party who had allegedly stashed unaccounted black money with Swiss banks.
He claimed that since the CBI was about to take permission from the Congress-led government at the Centre for their prosecution, "Gadkari is spearheading a campaign against the investigating agency. The BJP president is desperate."
The Congress, he said, was scanning files involving ommission and commission by BJP leaders when the NDA was in power at the Centre, the RJD chief said.
He claimed that the CBI may be seeking the help of Interpol to uncover the money in Swiss banks and to know its source.
"We are once again being targeted for political purposes and to pre-empt the CBI from prosecuting them," he added. Refusing to take legal recourse against Gadkari, the RJD chief alleged that the erstwhile NDA government had "misused" the CBI to implicate him in the multi-crore fodder scam."I was implicated in cases by CBI at the instance of the erstwhile Vajpayee government because I stopped a BJP rath yatra in Bihar," he alleged.
"It is a different matter that I fought the legal battle for more than 13 years and was acquitted in a disproportionate assets case against me and my wife," he said.
Prasad said he was still facing some more cases related to the fodder scam and "our legal fight is going on". He accused the NDA government of trying to accommodate as governor then CBI joint director U N Biswas, who handled the fodder scam.
"I personally contacted the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and advised him to not appoint Biswas as governor as it will be in bad taste and Vajpayeeji agreed to my suggestion," Prasad claimed.
"It is unfortunate that the BJP made Gadkari, a non-entity, its president, who is not even in a position to win the election of ward councillor," he said.
Prasad said that in his long career in politics he had never heard something so abusive. "Even L K Advaniji has always remained sober in his criticism of political opponents," he added. PTI
