Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that he was laughing and cracking jokes in Parliament at a time when violence has been raging in Manipur.

“Women and children are dying over there, people are being murdered, women are being molested, raped and the prime minister of India sitting in the middle of Parliament was shamelessly laughing,” Gandhi said during a press conference.

At least 187 people have been killed and nearly 60,000 have been forced to flee their homes since violence broke out between the Kuki and Meitei communities in the Northeastern state on May 3. The state has reported cases of rape and murder, and mobs have looted police armoury and set several homes on fire despite the heavy presence of central security forces.

At his press conference, Gandhi spoke about the speech that the prime minister delivered while replying to the Opposition’s no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha on Thursday .

In the speech lasting over two hours, Modi spoke about Manipur for barely 10 minutes. His first reference to the violence-hit state came after 90 minutes and once the Opposition MPs staged a walkout. The prime minister’s speech also mostly targeted the Congress party and its allies.

On Friday, Gandhi alleged that Modi “wants Manipur to burn” and is deliberately not using the instruments under his control to contain the violence.

“It will take the Indian Army two days to put an end to the nonsense that is going on in Manipur,” the former Congress chief said. “The prime minister refuses to stop the fight.”

Gandhi said that when a person becomes the prime minister, he ceases to be a politician and should turn into a representative of all people.

“He [Modi] is our representative, he is my representative and watching the prime minister spend two hours talking about the Congress, talking about the Opposition, making ridiculous remarks about the name [of the Opposition alliance], this really does not do justice to an Indian prime minister,” he added.

Gandhi also reiterated that he had not used the statement “Bharat Mata has been murdered in Manipur” metaphorically in Parliament. Portions of the Congress MP’s speech had been expunged from the Lok Sabha records on Wednesday after an uproar.

Opposition ran away from Parliament, says Narendra Modi

On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that by winning the no-confidence motion in the Parliament, his government has defeated the “negativity” spread by the Opposition.

“The Opposition parties didn’t want voting to happen as it would have exposed the cracks in their alliance,” Modi said while addressing workers of the BJP in West Bengal. “They ran away from the House.”

He also claimed that the Opposition did not want a discussion on the violence in Manipur.

“They were not serious about any discussion,” he said. “They only wanted to do politics over it.”

The prime minister also criticised the ruling Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal, alleging that they let loose a “reign of terror” in West Bengal during the rural polls in July.

“In Bengal, violence has been used as a means to threaten the Opposition,” he claimed. “When our candidates won, they were not allowed to take out a procession. If some took out a procession, they were attacked. This is the Trinamool Congress’ politics,” he alleged.