During his ongoing visit to Ladakh, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi embarked on a journey from Leh city to the enchanting Pangong Lake on Saturday, riding his KTM 390 Duke motorbike. Sharing his experience on Instagram, the veteran Congress leader said, "On our way to Pangong lake, which my father used to say, is one of the most beautiful places in the world."
The pictures posted by Rahul Gandhi were instantly viral on social media, with many drooling over the Gandhi scion's 'cool' looks wearing riding gears and leading the pack of bikers on the roads of Ladakh.
The BJP, however, has posed question regarding the people accompanying Gandhi to the iconic Pangong Tso lake on his bike ride. The saffron party alleged that three of the people tagging along with Gandhi are foreign nationals.
BJP leader Priti Gandhi, taking to X (formerly Twitter), said, "Rahul Gandhi, is in Leh, on a holiday. He arrived on 17th Aug and was seen driving to Pangong Tso lake, with a group of people, this afternoon. Interestingly, of those accompanying him, three are foreigners. Shakir Mohamed Nurali Merali and Sadiq Irfan Kimani Merali are Kenyans. Luigi Vinci, his third accomplice, is an Italian! All three are on Tourist visa. What exactly is his association/relation with these foreigners?! Something seems fishy."
The FPJ tried to look up the names given by the BJP on the internet. Though there's info available for Shakir Mohamed Nurali Merali and Luigi Vinci, we could not find any information regarding Sadiq Irfan Kimani Merali.
The FPJ has not independently verified whether the said individuals are indeed travelling with Rahul Gandhi or are the same people we have been able to find on the internet.
Shakir Mohamed Nurali Merali
According to the United Kingdom government's website, Shakir Mohamed Nurali Merali is a Venture Capitalist and former director of IGLU.COM. As per its website, the IGLU.COm is the UK's largest independent specialist ski and cruise travel agency. 51-year-old Merali is Kenyan by nationality.
As per Pomanda.com, Merali has been director of three comapnies so far, namely Iglu.Com Limited, Geocapital Limited and Vedaris Limited.
Merali's primary area of work is travel agency, tour operator and other reservation service and related activities.
Luigi Vinci
Luigi Vinci is an Italian born Electrical engineer at Qualcomm in Ireland, as per his LinkedIn profile.
His LinkedIn bio reads, "Electronic Engineer with an academic background in Digital Design and Computer Architectures, and 5-years of professional experience in modelling of SoC Memory SubSystem Architectures and analysis of performance at system and memory-level. Passionate and enthusiast about Artificial Intelligence, after having worked on a Master Thesis Project on the FPGA Hardware Acceleration of a CNN, I have taken through the years several basic courses on Deep Learning."
He's done his Masters from Politecnico di Torino, the oldest Italian technical university founded in 1859.
Though no specific information was available on Sadiq Irfan Kimani Merali, social media accounts said he is a Kenyan born in 2004 and a student.
