Nehru snooping : Congress hits back

Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh also raked up the snooping allegations against then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and state home minister Amit Shah.

"After Sardar Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri, GB Pant and Katju were the Home Ministers and Shastri ji was Prime Minister after Nehru. Were they also part of snooping? What was Modi doing when his MoS Home Amit Shah was snooping on an unaware and innocent lady?" he tweeted.

Two  recently de-classified Intelligence Bureau files reportedly say that  family of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was spied for two decades from 1948 to 1968, even though the first premier of India died in 1964.

A report says that intelligence personnel not only used to intercept and copy letters written by Bose's family members, but also shadowed them on their domestic and foreign travels to know who they met and what discussions they had.

The report quotes BJP leader MJ Akbar as claiming that the government was unsure whether Bose was dead. Akbar says Bose was the only charismatic leader who could have mobilised Opposition unity against Congress, and offered it a serious challenge in the 1957 elections.

The Congress attack came even as Intelligence Bureau sources said that the files may have been accidentally released in the public domain.

BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh accused Digvijaya Singh of twisting the whole issue. He said, "It is in the Congress's DNA to snoop on important figures. The Congress needs to answer why Nehruji initiated the snooping. Digvijaya Singh is trying to twist this whole issue."