Guwahati, Dec 13: The investigation into Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi and his wife’s alleged links with Pakistan will be handed over to a central agency, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Friday, asserting that the complexity of the case makes it beyond the scope of a state-level probe.
“In a case where so much complexity is involved, it will not be possible only for the Assam SIT to investigate and unearth all aspects. The matter will, however, go to the central agency for further investigation,” Sarma said while speaking to the press on the sidelines of a programme.
The Chief Minister said the decision would follow the conclusion of the Special Investigation Team’s (SIT) work in the Zubeen Garg death case, in which a charge sheet has already been filed on December 12.
“Now that the SIT has submitted the charge sheet in the case related to Zubeen Garg’s death, we will move to the case of Gaurav Gogoi,” Sarma said.
He further added that once the Garg case moves into regular trial, the state government “will share certain documents related to the Gogoi matter by the end of this month or early next month”.
Sarma, however, claimed that the findings so far were enough to draw conclusions. “Whatever the SIT has achieved in the Gaurav Gogoi case is sufficient to draw a conclusion against the accused,” he said.
The Assam government had earlier constituted an SIT to probe allegations levelled by Sarma against the Jorhat MP and his wife, Elizabeth Colburn, over their alleged links with Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.
The SIT submitted its report to the Chief Minister on September 10.
The APCC chief had earlier strongly denied the allegations, describing them as baseless and likening them to a “C-grade Bollywood film” that is destined to flop.
He has been constantly responding to the allegations pointed out by Chief Minister and accused Sarma of making repeated foreign-link allegations for political mileage, asserting that such claims are aimed at diverting attention from governance issues.
With inputs from PTI