The situation turned serious when even Prime Minister Indira Gandhi fanned the suspicions and so did her senior ministers and fellow partymen. On 5 October 1972, Minister of External Affairs Swaran Singh complained to his US counterpart that the Government of India “has its own sources and knows that CIA has been in contact with people in India in ‘abnormal ways.'” On 20 October in Bhopal the same year, then Congress party president Shankar Dayal Sharma (later President of India) accused the agency of “colluding with opposition parties to ‘create chaos and frustrate our efforts to banish poverty'”.