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Will quit if charges proved: Sodhi Chandigarh, January 7 Taking to The Tribune here this afternoon, Sodhi said: “If those who have resorted to my character assassination are able to prove any of their charges, I shall be liable for any action or punishment. I am an elected and responsible representative of my people and fully conscious of my duties towards the security and integrity of the country. I have done nothing wrong and a mistake innocently made by a family friend of mine from across the border has been blown out of proportion.” He said he was not even aware that Najmi Rizvi would be visiting Jaipur till she landed there on December 30, a day after he, accompanied by his wife, daughter and sister-in-law, had checked in a five-star hotel on a prior booking. “I had three rooms booked for myself and other members of my family. Nowadays when you check in any hotel, they ask for your identity. I produced my driving licence at the time of the checking,” Sodhi said. “While we were in Jaipur, I got a call from Rizvi that she wanted to visit a historic shrine at Ajmer. So I told her that she can come to Jaipur and from there she can go to Ajmer and Agra on her way back to Delhi. Though I had met her when she arrived in Chandigarh on December 25, then she went away to Delhi where she wanted to meet some friends of her son. Rizvi has two daughters and a son,” he added. “I, along with my family, attended a wedding reception in Chandigarh on December 28 and then we drove to Jaipur for the New Year celebrations. My driver, security guard and personal attendant also accompanied us from Chandigarh. And when Rizvi arrived in our hotel, there was no room available because of the New Year rush. So we volunteered to vacate one of our rooms to help the hotel to accommodate her. She gave her travel documents to the hotel staff while checking in,” he said. “On December 31, I got a call from the hotel staff that Rizvi has no visa for Jaipur. So the next morning, the hotel staff returned her passport to my wife and she left for Delhi the same day. I and my family were in the hotel till January 2 and no one even talked to us about Rizvi afterwards,” adds Sodhi.“I have done nothing wrong and I cannot be held responsible for someone else’s actions. It is the Ministry of External Affairs or Indian mission in Islamabad who gave her visa. Then at the Wagah border, government agencies checked her travel documents before allowing her into India. Further, central agencies are much better equipped than the media or any other private agency to know whether a visitor from across the border was a threat to the security of the country or not,” he said. “What do my detractors expect of a 54-year-old grandmother, who runs a school in Rawalpindi, to be. It was her first visit to India and overconfidence or lack of awareness about the visa restrictions have been blown disproportionately into a political controversy so as to mar my career. Her case has been publicised so much. What would my detractors say about Judges of the Pakistan Punjab Haryana High Court who visited Ferozepur without having any valid visa for that town recently,” quips Sodhi
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