“No 1 Adani then No 2 Modi and then is Amit Shah”, Rahul Gandhi claims Modi is Adani’s employee after Apple’s “state sponsored attack” alert row

Sharpening his attack on Prime Minister Modi after Apple’s “state-sponsored attack” alert messages, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi claimed that those who have received such warning messages are all vocal against businessman Gautam Adani and his monopolization in the Indian market. “This is done by the parrot”, said Rahul Gandhi referring to ‘the king and the parrot’ story, and added that PM Modi has his soul in the parrot named Adani. “This is not done by someone who is honest, this is the work of criminals and thieves. Only thieves and criminals would want to do this,” Rahul Gandhi said while holding the enlarged printout of the alert message reading “state-sponsored attackers” trying to “remotely compromise you iPhones” that several opposition party leaders have received from ‘Apple’ including TMC's Mahua Moitra, AAP's Raghav Chanda amongst others. “You can tap phones as much as you want. I don’t care. If you want, I can give my phone to you. We are not afraid. We are fighting,” he said at a press conference in Delhi on Tuesday.

Reiterating his allegations, Rahul Gandhi stressed that the Modi government has used all its resources to help Adani and whoever tried to question that or question Adani, this government has found ways to distract the attention of the nation. “There used to be a nasty king in India against whom people stood up and the opposition was attacking him. But nothing used to affect him. People then went to a rishi and said they kept attacking the king, people were against him but nothing happened. Rishi said the king's soul is not with him. There is a parrot in a small cottage and his soul is in that parrot. Modi’s soul is in Adani. Earlier, I used to think number 1 was PM Modi and number 2 was Amit Shah but now we all understand the ranking. Number 1 is Adani, number 2 is PM Modi and number 3 is Amit Shah. Modi is Adani’s employee”, said Gandhi while stressing that Mumbai airport was acquired by Adani only after CBI had raided the previous businessman who was operating it.

This isn’t the first time Rahul Gandhi has linked PM Modi with Adani but this was the first time though where he claimed that Adani was PM Modi’s boss, controlling the government and every business in the nation. He cast aspersion that since his party is so vocal against the Adani monopoly, most of his party members had received the alert messages.

While ‘Apple’ said it does not attribute threat notifications, ones received by some opposition MPs belonging to the INDIA alliance bloc, to any specific state-sponsored attackers and that it cannot provide information on what causes such warnings, the BJP-led Central Government has however rejected the allegations as "baseless and false" and said it was for Apple to clarify.

"The last Pegasus inquiry where my name was also there… that sort of disappeared. So that tells you the situation in the country. Our job as Opposition is to make people understand what is going on and I am very happy that more and more people are understanding what is going on,” Congress' Rahul Gandhi.