TMC demands PM Modi should 'step aside' after his name appeared in 'Epstein Files'

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should “step aside” in the wake of the reference to his meeting with the United States President Donald Trump and his visit to Israel in 2017 in an email written by late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The party, led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, said that the appearance of the prime minister’s name in the investigative records of the United States Department of Justice concerning convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was “nothing short of a national humiliation”.

“In any functioning democracy, even the remotest shadow of association with such depravity demands immediate transparency, accountability, and moral responsibility,” the TMC stated, adding, “Silence is not an option”.

The US Department of Justice on Friday disclosed an extensive cache of investigative records connected to Epstein, placing more than three million pages of documents, over 2,000 videos, and roughly 180,000 images in the public domain. This included an email Epstein wrote on July 6, 2017.

The email has a reference to Modi’s first visit to Israel, beginning July 4, 2017. He was the first prime minister of India to visit Israel. His visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and his meetings with his counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, de-hyphenated India’s relations with Israel and Palestine. He visited Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, too, a few months later.

“The Indian Prime Minister Modi took advice and danced and sang in Israel for the benefit of the US president,” Epstein wrote in an email on July 6, 2017.

The email also referred to a meeting between Modi and US President Donald Trump a few weeks before, and noted, “It worked.”

“If there is even a fragment of truth to these disclosures, the only honourable course before the prime minister is to step aside and subject himself fully to scrutiny,” Mamata Banerjee’s party posted on X on Sunday.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Saturday dismissed the reference to the prime minister’s visit to Israel in Epstein’s email as “trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal” adding that the allusions in the email deserved to be rubbished “with the utmost contempt”.

The TMC, however, stated that India’s dignity, the sanctity of its institutions, and the trust of its citizens could not be held hostage to personal power or political convenience.