Video war over Rafale controversy: Rahul Gandhi dubs Narendra Modi 'India's commander-in-thief' after French video resurfaces

New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday released a video of a French media portal in connection with the Rafale fighter jet deal and appeared to suggest this is the "sad truth" about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The sad truth about India's Commander in Thief," Rahul said on Twitter, in an apparent attack on Modi and tagged the video along with his tweet.

The video targets the Modi government on the Rafale deal and quoted the editor of Mediapart, a French media house, that published a story on Friday quoting former French president Francois Hollande as saying it was the Indian government that "proposed" Reliance Defence as the partner of Dassault Aviation for Rafale offset contracts.

"The key sentence in his reply is 'We did not have a choice'.

"We did not have a word to say about that subject. The Indian government suggested this service provider and Dassault negotiated with Ambani. We did not have a choice. We picked the interlocutor which was selected for us by the Indian government. That's the contract," the Mediapart editor said quoting Hollande.

The video further noted that while the Indian government has stated it did not have "any say in the commercial decision", but Hollande, who had presided over the deal, said this was not true.