By Ananya Sharma 
New Delhi, April 7: Police from Assam knocked on the doors of a Congress leader’s home in New Delhi on Tuesday morning. The man they were looking for, Pawan Khera, was not there. According to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, he had left for Hyderabad. That detail, unverified independently, tells you everything about how fast this political row has moved in just 72 hours.
This is a story about passports, crores, a Pakistan allegation, a criminal case, and an election that is now less than two days away. It is also, at its core, a story about how ruthlessly both the Congress and the BJP are fighting over Assam.
What Started This Whole Thing
On Sunday, April 5, Pawan Khera, who heads the Congress party’s media department, held a press conference in New Delhi and dropped what he called a bombshell.
He alleged that Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, wife of Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, holds three foreign passports. Not one. Three. He said she had a passport from the UAE, issued in March 2022; one from Antigua and Barbuda, issued in August 2021; and one from Egypt, issued in February 2022. He displayed images of the documents on the camera.
That alone would be a serious allegation. But Khera kept going.
He alleged she owns two properties in Dubai that were never mentioned in the CM’s election affidavit. He also claimed links to a company registered in Wyoming, USA, which he valued at Rs 52,000 crore, and tied it to hotel ventures involving the CM, his wife, and their son.
He termed the matter a case of alleged concealment of assets and called for a Special Investigation Team probe by the Union Home Ministry.
Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi held a parallel press conference in Guwahati the same day, calling the CM “an embarrassment for Assam and India” and demanding a full investigation.
The timing was not accidental. Assam votes on April 9.
Why the Passport Angle Hit Hard
To understand why this allegation resonated, you need to know one thing about Indian law. India does not allow dual citizenship. An Indian citizen cannot legally hold a foreign passport of another country. If the claims were true, it would mean Riniki Bhuyan Sarma potentially gave up Indian citizenship, or was at a minimum in violation of the Citizenship Act.
Khera leaned into this directly, asking publicly how the CM, whose entire political career has been built on targeting Muslim communities in Assam, could have a wife holding passports from two Muslim-majority nations, the UAE and Egypt. It was pointed, personal, and calculated.
Still, no independent authority had verified the documents at the time of publication.
Sarma’s Rebuttal Was Fast and Detailed
CM Sarma did not let a day pass before responding. He went point by point.
He said the surname in the documents shown was written as “SARMA“, not the official “SHARMA.” He said the photographs used appeared to be publicly available images rather than proper biometric captures. He said the UAE does not even issue passports to non-Emirati nationals, only long-term visas, making the very premise of that document impossible.
On the UAE passport specifically, Sarma said confirmation had already been received from a Dubai government website that it was fake, and that reports on the remaining two were expected within days.
On the Rs 52,000 crore valuation of the company, he said it flatly did not make sense. “The entire budget of Assam isn’t even Rs 52,000 crore. Even if a chief minister earns for 20 years, it couldn’t be Rs 52,000 crore. That’s basic common sense,” he said.
He is not wrong on that count. The number is impossible on its face.
Then came the claim that changed the tone of the entire row.
“This Material Came From Pakistan”
At a press conference in Guwahati, CM Sarma alleged that the entire material used in Khera’s Delhi briefing and Gogoi’s Guwahati session was supplied by a Pakistani social media group. He named two groups specifically: “Pakistani in Ajman” and “Tipu Sultan.” He said Pakistani television channels had aired at least 11 talk shows about the Assam election in the preceding ten days, all of them concluding that Congress should win.
He called it foreign interference in an Indian election. He said it was a crime against the nation. And he said that under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, using fabricated documents to influence an election can carry life imprisonment.
He also claimed that the property documents linking his family to Dubai apartments were not original but stolen from Scribd, a document-sharing website, and then digitally manipulated.
None of these counterclaims has been independently verified either. What is clear is that both sides are now making allegations that go well beyond normal pre-election mud-slinging.
The FIR and Tuesday’s Search
Riniki Bhuyan Sarma moved to register a criminal case on Sunday night itself. The FIR was registered as Case No. 4/26 with the Assam Police Crime Branch, invoking 12 sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, covering forgery, cheating, criminal conspiracy, and the use of fabricated documents.
By Tuesday morning, Assam Police had arrived at Pawan Khera’s New Delhi residence to carry out searches.
CM Sarma told reporters that Khera had already left for Hyderabad by then, framing his absence as an act of running away from accountability. Khera’s office had not issued a formal response to this claim at the time of writing.
This is not the first time Assam Police has come calling for Pawan Khera in Delhi. In 2023, he was actually deplaned from an IndiGo flight at Delhi airport and briefly taken into custody by Assam Police over remarks he made against PM Modi at a press conference. The Supreme Court intervened and granted him interim bail. That history adds a layer of context here. For Sarma, using state police as a political instrument against Congress spokespeople is not a new playbook. For Congress, being targeted this way ahead of elections is not a new experience either.
What This Row Is Really About
Step back from the passport documents and the FIRs for a moment.
Assam goes to vote on April 9 with all 126 assembly seats at stake. Results come on May 4. The BJP-led alliance under Sarma is the frontrunner by most estimates. Sarma himself has been claiming his alliance will win at least 100 seats.
Congress, fighting as part of a broader opposition combine, needed a story that would cut through in the final stretch. The passport allegation was meant to do that. It was aimed at the one thing Sarma has built his brand on, a tough, morally upright, nationalist image. If the documents were real, the damage to that image would have been significant.
As it turns out, the BJP turned the story back around within 24 hours. By the time police arrived at Khera’s home in Delhi, the front-page story had shifted from “CM’s wife has three passports” to “Congress used fake documents sourced from Pakistan.” That is a very different headline, and it is one that arguably helps the BJP more in the final 48 hours of campaigning.
Whether the documents were genuinely fabricated or whether Sarma’s Pakistan claims hold up will be for investigators and courts to determine. That process will take months. The election takes place in two days.
What Voters Are Left With
Ordinary voters in Assam are now trying to make sense of a situation where both sides are calling the other liars. Congress says the CM hid foreign assets and passports. The CM says Congress manufactured fake documents with the help of Pakistan. Both cannot be entirely true.
What is verifiably true is this: Riniki Bhuyan Sarma filed an FIR. Assam Police searched Pawan Khera’s Delhi home. The Crime Branch is investigating. And an election is hours away.
For now, the courts will sort out the truth after April 9. What happens at the ballot box on that day is a different question altogether, and it is the one that will settle the immediate political stakes.
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Covers Indian politics, governance, and policy developments with over a decade of experience in political reporting.
- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
