Indian minister rejects opposition claims over name in Epstein files
India’s petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri has rejected allegations by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi linking him to the criminal activities of late US financier Jeffrey Epstein, saying he met Epstein only a handful of times as part of an international delegation and had no involvement in his crimes.
The dispute erupted after Gandhi told parliament that Puri’s name appeared in documents released by the US Department of Justice related to Epstein, who was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019 and later died in a New York jail cell.
The so-called “Epstein files” include millions of pages of emails and records detailing his social and professional contacts.
Speaking to reporters hours after Gandhi’s address, Puri said he encountered Epstein “three or four times at most” while serving with the New York-based International Peace Institute (IPI), where his then-supervisor knew the financier.
“Our interactions had nothing to do with the crimes he is accused of,” Puri said, adding that references to him in the documents were limited.
He said one email exchange, in which Epstein was copied, related to discussions about India’s digital economy and outreach to technology investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Puri said the correspondence focused on India’s internet growth and investment opportunities and did not concern Epstein’s personal activities. In another exchange from 2014, Puri said, Epstein referred to him as “two-faced,” which the minister cited to argue that he was not part of Epstein’s inner circle.
Gandhi’s remarks are part of a broader political offensive by India’s main opposition party, which has sought to question the government over references to Indian public figures in the US disclosures.
The government has dismissed such references as irrelevant or misleading.
Last month, India’s foreign ministry rejected as “trashy ruminations” an email mentioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2017 visit to Israel, stressing that official travel details were publicly known and unrelated to any wrongdoing.
The US Justice Department last month released a new tranche of records under transparency rules aimed at shedding light on what authorities knew about Epstein’s abuse of underage girls and his connections with influential figures.
While the documents list a wide range of global business leaders and politicians, inclusion in the records does not in itself imply criminal conduct.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
