Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri

NEW DELHI: Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri lashed out at Lok Sabha leader of the opposition Rahul Gandhi over Congress’s repeated attacks over the infamous Epstein files, saying he met Jeffrey Epstein only “three or four times” in a professional capacity as part of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism.Puri said the meetings took place before he joined the Union Cabinet in 2017 and are already in the public domain.“I want to remind you that today, during the Parliament session, my name was mentioned in the context of some developments elsewhere—the Epstein files. I just want to share some information… I want to clarify that these facts are all public,” Puri said at a press conference. He futher added: “Three million emails have been released, covering the period from May 2009, when I joined as India’s Ambassador to the UN in New York, until I became a minister in 2017. During this period, there are references to only three or four meetings, and my interactions were entirely professional, related to the Independent Commission on Multilateralism and other international work.”Taking a vile dig at “yuva neta” (young leader) Rahul Gandhi, Puri said: “Epstein Files, the Yuva Neta should know, are about wrongdoing, criminal offences. The Epstein Files are about charges that he had an island where he used to take people to indulge their sexual fantasies, charges of paedophilia, and there are victims of this. Those victims have brought cases against people in authority. My interaction had nothing to do with that.“Amid the criticism from the opposition over the India-US trade deal, Hardeep Puri said the pact was the best given the tumultuous global situation and that it was just a trailer. Further defending India’s economic growth and slamming Rahul Gandhi for echoing Trump’s “dead economy” claim, Puri said: “On the one hand, you have leaders who dedicate their lives to transforming the country and work around the clock, and then you have elements of buffoonery. I am choosing my words carefully, elements of buffoonery. I did not call him (Rahul Gandhi) a buffoon; I said elements of buffoonery.”