An RSS leader and a senior BJP leader today slammed the late Mother Teresa over the recent reports of a baby-selling racket being run in the Missionaries of Charity in Ranchi. This came after the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said the Mother Teresa-founded charity was being "maliciously targeted" and "maligned".

Rajiv Tuli, the Delhi RSS prachar pramukh, told India Today that the Bharat Ratna conferred to Mother Teresa for her charity work should be taken away if the allegations against the Missionaries of Charity are proven to be true.

"Indian citizens wouldn't want the the honour of Bharat Ratna to be tainted," said Tuli. "In 1980, Mother Teresa was given the Bharat Ratna. Even then allegations were being made, and they are being made now as well. If they are proved to be true, we should rethink Mother Teresa's Bharat Ratna."

Tuli further added that Mother Teresa, who was granted sainthood by the Vatican last year, "never worked for people's welfare", and that religious conversion was her agenda.

Senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has backed Tuli's comments.

"I 100 per cent support it," Swamy said about Tuli's comments while speaking to India Today, calling Mother Teresa's work "a cover".

Swamy also referred to British author Christopher Hitchens's book (The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice) and how it "documented all the fraud she's done".

"If you have got multiple examples of criminality by Mother Teresa, why should she be a person who is celebrated as a Nobel laureate?" Swamy added.

Earlier today, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee stepped in to stick up for the Mother Teresa-founded NGO. In a tweet, Mamata today wrote that "malicious attempts" are being made to "malign" the names of Missionaries of Charity Sisters.

Mother Teresa herself set up Missionaries of Charity. And now they are also not being spared. Malicious attempts to malign their name. The Sisters are being targeted. #BJP want to spare no one. Highly condemnable. Let MOC continue to do their work for the poorest of the poor Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) July 12, 2018

Reacting to Mamata's comment, Swamy said, "If Mamata Banerjee wants to have a debate, I'm ready... I can produce facts..."

Mamata's comments came after allegations of a child being sold for Rs 1.2 lakh at the Missionaries of Charity blew the lid off the scandal. A couple approached the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in Ranchi with claims that staffers at the charity, after taking Rs 1.2 lakh for a 14-day infant, took away the child from them.

The allegations led the CWC and the Jharkhand government to launch a probe against the Missionary of Charity in Ranchi.

In 2014, a former CWC chairperson named Om Prakash Singh had raised an alarm about claims of child-trafficking at the Missionaries of Charity in Ranchi.

"I received information about child trafficking at Missionaries of Charity. I informed social welfare. We couldn't complete our probe. We were told no officer had come for investigation," said Singh.

Singh claims that the office bearer at the MOC branch never came for examinations. He added that the sisters at the charity too did not cooperate with the probe and that he was eventually shunted.

What Singh claimed four years ago has now attracted attention. Two nuns and a woman employee of Ranchi's MOC are now in police custody for their alleged role in child-trafficking.

Jharkhand DGP, on Wednesday, wrote to the home secretary to freeze the bank accounts of the Missionaries of Charity. The move comes days after it was found that around five organisations operating under it were allegedly receiving crores of money as foreign funds.

The Centre is likely to probe the funds that have been received by the charitable organisation. If the funds turn out to be over a crore, the CBI might join the investigation.

Meanwhile, the Jharkhand child rights body has shifted over 20 children who were sheltered at two MOC centres. Police are also probing to trace the legal custodian of these children.

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