RS Prasad slams Rahul's Rafale remark, says he has no ability

Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad launched a blistering attack on Congress president Rahul Gandhi after the latter charged Prime Minister Narendra Modi of indulging in corruption.

Prasad said that it was wrong to expect a more mature statement from Gandhi when his "entire family is arraigned for scams like the National Herald scam and the Bofors scandal."

"No party chief ever called the Prime Minister of India a thief. We never expect anything better from him to say. Neither he has any quality nor any ability. He has become the party chief only because of the family politics. He is someone who is charge-sheeted in the National Herald case along with his mother. He is someone whose entire family was involved in the infamous Bofors scandal. We don't expect anything from him at all," Prasad told as he briefed the media.

"Who let Ottavio Quattrocchi flee the country? Can Rahul Gandhi recall? The then law minister of the country succumbed to your family pressure and sent an additional solicitor general to London to unseal Quattrocchi's bank account. How can you label Prime Minister Modi a thief now? None in the country have confidence in what Rahul is saying," Prasad added.

On Saturday, Congress president Rahul Gandhi had intensified his attack on Prime Minister Modi over the Rafale fighter jets controversy. Addressing a press conference, Gandhi had taken a dig at Modi, saying, "Desh Ka Chowkidar Chor Hai" (the custodian of the country is now a thief).

Quoting the statement made by former French president François Hollande to a French journal, in which he had said that the Indian government had proposed businessman Anil Ambani's name for the deal, Gandhi had said, "I have a statement from France's ex-president which says "we did not have a say in this matter, it is Indian government that decided to give the contract to Anil Ambani, we did not have a choice."

The Congress president had further said, "For the first time a French ex-president is calling an Indian Prime Minister a thief."

The former French president, François Hollande in an interview to a media house on Friday, had contradicted Indian government's claim that the agreement between Dassault and Reliance was a commercial pact between two private parties and the government had nothing to do with it.