Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri acknowledged on February 11 that he had met Jeffrey Epstein “three or four times” over several years, insisting that the interactions were limited, professional, and unrelated to the disgraced financier’s criminal conduct.
His remarks followed a statement by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Parliament, where he highlighted Puri\’s name, alongside industrialist Anil Ambani, appearing in documents from the US Department of Justice related to Epstein.
Gandhi questioned why Ambani was “not in jail” and suggested that the references in the files could be exerting pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi concerning an interim trade deal between India and the US.
He claimed that such material created “direct pressure” on the Prime Minister and argued that in a “normal situation,” policy decisions regarding data, farmers, energy security, and defense would not be proceeding as they have.
In a press conference later that day, Puri, who previously served as the Ambassador to the US, stated, “Out of roughly three million emails, there are references to only three or four meetings. I met Epstein on a few occasions as part of an official delegation and exchanged just one email. My interactions were entirely professional.”
Puri explained that these meetings occurred through his association with the International Peace Institute, where he was Secretary General of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism.
When asked about Epstein’s 2008 conviction as a sex offender and the fact that their interactions occurred afterward, Puri reiterated that his contact with Epstein was minimal. “Many of us had doubts. That is why people like us left,” he remarked without further elaboration.
He described Epstein as a prominent figure in New York social circles at that time. “Half the world that interacted with him had no clue to his past,” Puri contended, arguing that professional engagement does not imply endorsement. He drew a comparison from his diplomatic career, recalling negotiations with LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran as a young diplomat in Colombo, questioning, “Does that make me share the terrorist’s values?”
The controversy follows earlier statements from the Ministry of External Affairs, which dismissed references in the released files to Prime Minister Modi’s 2017 visit to Israel.
