A day after MP Madan Lal Sharma’s revelations that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had intervened to save J&K Speaker Tara Chand and former Pradesh Congress president Perzada Mohammad Sayeed from imminent arrest in the Srinagar sex abuse case, a startled party leadership on Tuesday issued a show-cause notice to Sharma, seeking disciplinary action against him.

J&K Pradesh Congress Committee president and Union Water Resources Minister Prof Saifuddin Soz issued the notice and sought Sharma’s reply within a week.

On Tuesday, Azad said Sharma’s statement was not only false but would also lead to contempt of court since the High Court had been monitoring the investigations on a weekly basis. He termed Sharma’s statement “indecent”. “Neither the MP has met me nor has he ever met Soniaji. He has never even mentioned this issue to us. The suggestion that we recommended the removal of anybody’s name (from the list of people involved in the sex abuse scandal) is totally baseless,” he said.

The CM said if they wanted to shield anybody, the state Government wouldn’t have referred the case to the CBI. “It (the case) was well within the jurisdiction of the state Government, and we would have instead asked our police, the IGP or any other investigating agency not to take action in the case,” he added.

“We wanted a free and fair investigation. That’s why we referred the case to the premier investigating agency of the country,” he said. “While the CBI was conducting its probe, the High Court and the lawyers were monitoring the investigations on a weekly basis.”

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