Don’t care about Assam CM’s threats, intimidation: Gaurav Gogoi

Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi on Thursday brushed aside threats and intimidation allegedly directed at him by Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, declaring that he remains unfazed and resolute in the face of political pressure.

Speaking to reporters in Jorhat, the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee chief said he had little regard for what he described as the chief minister’s politics of threats. “I do not care about the CM’s intimidation. Let him continue. The people of Assam no longer take such statements seriously,” Gogoi said, adding that a politics driven by fear and coercion is bound to be short-lived.

Striking a defiant note, Gogoi warned that power is transient. “The chief minister may do whatever he wants over the next four months, but once he loses power, he will have to live among the same people,” he asserted, suggesting that accountability would eventually catch up.

Sarma has, over the past few months, repeatedly targeted Gogoi and his British wife, Elizabeth Colburn, alleging links to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI. The Assam government had constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the matter, and the chief minister said last week that the case would now be handed over to a central investigating agency following the submission of the SIT report on 10 September.

The chief minister has also indicated that after the filing of a charge sheet in a separate case related to the death of singer Zubeen Garg, attention would now turn to the Gogoi matter. Responding to this, Gogoi questioned the credibility of the SIT’s findings in the Garg case, claiming that seasoned legal experts in the state have described the charge sheet as “extremely weak.”

He alleged that the document appeared to have been crafted to shield a close associate of the chief minister, Shyamkanu Mahanta, and claimed that several key accused who should have been named were conspicuously omitted. The charge sheet, Gogoi said, reflected a deliberate strategy to protect those close to the ruling establishment rather than deliver justice.

With PTI inputs