Student activist Shehla Rashid on Saturday suggested that Union minister Nitin Gadkari and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were behind an alleged plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. When Gadkari said he would take legal action, Rashid called her tweet “sarcastic”.

The Pune Police on Thursday had claimed to have found a letter at the home of one of the five activists it arrested a day before, suggesting a plot to kill Modi in his roadshows in a “Rajiv Gandhi-type incident”. The police had accused the activists of links with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Some Opposition parties expressed doubt about the credibility of the alleged letter. Rashid tweeted: “Looks like RSS/Gadkari is planning to assassinate Modi, and then blame it upon Muslims/Communists and then lynch Muslims.”

Without naming Rashid, Gadkari wrote on Twitter that he would take legal action against “anti-social elements who have made bizarre comments” about him.

Rashid then said that the the Union minister was getting worked up about a sarcastic tweet. She went on to ask Gadkari whether he would take similar action against a news channel for its allegations against student leader Umar Khalid.

“Leader of world’s biggest party gets worked up about a sarcastic tweet,” Rashid said on Twitter. “Imagine what an innocent student Umar Khalid must be going through after a baseless media assault on him and his father by Times Now. Mr Gadkari, will you also take action against Rahul Shivshankar?”

Meanwhile, the Congress on Saturday demanded an investigation into the alleged plot to assassinate Modi, and said the issue should not be politicised, PTI reported.

“Any threat received by anyone against the prime minister, howsoever suspicious the threat is, howsoever vague, even if it is a rumour, it should be taken seriously,” spokesperson Pawan Khera said. “Action should be taken, investigation should be done.”

Khera said the “threat to the prime minister of India” should not be used for “petty politics”.