Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Thursday demanded the arrest of Gautam Adani after his indictment in the US on bribery charges, adding for good measure that the businessman is safe in India because he has Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “protection”.

Of the view that the Congress and the Opposition stand vindicated by the US indictment, Rahul stepped up pressure on the Adanis with his demand for the arrest of Gautam Adani but maintained that this, too, would fall on deaf ears like his earlier calls for a probe into thegroup’s dealings.

“The Prime Minister is protecting Mr Adani,” Rahul asserted while maintaining that he would welcome expanding the probe he had been demanding to all Opposition-ruled states named in the indictment, which alleged that the Adani group had also greased the palms of governments in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh between 2021 and 2023.

During the period, all but Jammu and Kashmir — which was under central rule — were non-BJP ruled states though the BJD in Odisha and the YSRCP in Andhra Pradesh had sided with the BJP. Asked for his response at a media briefing, Rahul said all deals done without due process should be investigated.

Billing Adani as the “kingpin”, Rahul said he could guarantee that no probe would be ordered against the businessman as he “controlled” Modi and had “hijacked” the system. The Congress put out a meme portraying Modi as the puppet and a shadowy figure of Adani as the puppeteer to drive home the point Rahul was making — that while the US was investigating the allegations against the businessman, no probe had been ordered in India despite numerous allegations.

Rahul contested the perception that the Opposition’s efforts had been futile. “You are missing the point. It is not that nothing has happened. The Prime Minister’s credibility has been destroyed.... We know that there is no government institution that is going to help put Mr Adani where he belongs,” he said, claiming success in demonstrating to all Indians that “Mr Adani and Mr Modi are the same thing, that Mr Modi is corrupt, that Mr Adani is his bagman”.

Rahul added that the Opposition would expose the entire network the way the Congress had brought out the wrongdoings of Sebi chief Madhabi Puri Buch. “We have also shown you how she is connected to Mr Adani…. By the end of it, India will know who are the people, every single one of them, who have hijacked this country.”

Trinamool’s Mahua Moitra — another trenchant critic of Adani — said in a post on X: “This is Modi & BJP’s legacy — to run the biggest global kleptocracy. Selling out India’s resources & infrastructure to one corrupt crony at taxpayer & poor’s expense. FBI + DOJ + US SEC investigation indicted not only Adani but India’s government, regulators & rotten system.”

Priyanka Chaturvedi of Shiv Sena (UBT) — which has announced that it will cancel the tender awarded to the Adani group for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project — trained her guns at Sebi: “I wonder how @SEBI_India continues to lose its credibility just to protect one group’s business interest.”