BJP president J.P. Nadda on Thursday wrote to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge accusing Rahul Gandhi, his mother Sonia Gandhi and other Congress leaders of having a history of abusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Kharge on Tuesday had written to Modi expressing concern over junior minister Ravneet Singh Bittu (a former Congress MP) calling Rahul a “number one terrorist” and an NDA MLA allegedly giving death threats to the leader of the Opposition. Kharge demanded strict action against those issuing such statements.

Two days later, Nadda launched a counter-attack, recalling the charges the BJP has been levelling against the Gandhi family and the Congress, accusing Kharge of writing the letter out of “political compulsion” to market a “failed product”.

“Khargeji, you have written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modiji out of political compulsion aimed to polish and market your failed product in the market. After reading your letter I felt that things you have said are far from the truth,” Nadda said in the opening paragraph of his letter in Hindi.

“Under what compulsion are you trying to justify a person who called the Prime Minister and the entire OBC community thieves, used derogatory words against the PM, said in Parliament that the PM should be beaten with sticks and about whose fallen mentality the nation as a whole is aware?” he added.

Nadda claimed that Rahul had once spoken about people “beating up” Modi with the baton and went on to recall Sonia Gandhi’s “maut ka saudagar (merchant of death)” remarks against Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat. He asked why the Congress forgot the value of “decorum in politics” then. Nadda claimed that in the last 10 years, the Congress has heaped 110 abusive words on Modi.

“No mass leader in independent India was insulted as much as your party leaders have insulted the Prime Minister…. If I start giving examples of this, I will have to write a book,” he added.

Nadda levelled a barrage of accusations against Rahul, seeking to portray the Congress MP as “anti-national”.

“What makes you so proud of Rahul Gandhi? That he embraces anti-India and pro-Pakistan people or that he stands in solidarity with terrorists?...That he talks about caste and reservation to divide society or that he goes abroad and talks about ending reservation for backwards, Dalits and Adivasis?” he asked.

Nadda also named Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor, Digvijaya Singh, P. Chidambaram, Sam Pitroda and others, accusing them of defaming the nation and instigating a north-south divide.

“In the so-called mohabbat ki dukaan of the power-hungry Congress run by your leader Rahul Gandhi, the products being sold are the poison of casteism, seed of ill-will, spice of anti-nationalism, the chemical to defame the country and a hammer to break it,” Nadda wrote, adding: “I hope you and your party must have got answers to your questions”.