New Delhi: Reports that mobsters belonging to the Chhota Shakeel gang have been arrested and that they may have been planning to target Bharatiya Janata Party MP Varun Gandhi have led to a sharp response from his mother Maneka.
Maneka has said that the government was taking the matter too lightly.
"The government has been ignoring Varun's security. If this case involved the children of the PM, would he have ignored it in the same way?" said Maneka.
The BJP's Gandhi is back in the news with anger directed towards the Prime Minister and his government. Maneka alleges that six sharpshooters of the Chhota Shakeel gang arrested in Delhi were planning to target Varun and his legal team.
Delhi Police is interrogating the men allegedly of Chhota Shakeel gang but it is not willing to give details of what is happening. This has angered Varun's mother to the extent that she has complained about the police commissioner to the Prime Minister in a strongly-worded letter.
"He seems to be a political threat to you and your party. He is constantly attacked using all the weapons at your command," Maneka has written to the Prime Minister.
The BJP, to which the mother and son are MPs of, backed the two much quicker than they did when Varun made his controversial hate speech in March.
"There was a plot to kill Varun and his legal team. There should be adequate security arrangements made," said BJP spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad.
Home Ministry sources claim that Varun has a Z-security cover, but his family says its just X.
"For Mrs Maneka Gandhi to allege that the Home Minister or any other functionary of the government is non serious about the security of a particular individual, who in this case also happens to be a Member of Parliament, is absolutely erroneous," said Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari.
As allegations and counter-allegations fly, the seriousness of the threat will be known once police complete the investigations for which they have a week.