Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera on Monday claimed that at least 60 files with references to India in the tranche of documents from late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate released on the US Department of Justice website have disappeared since the US-India trade deal was signed.

“The only development that took place in-between is the one-sided, pro-US trade deal. So the obvious question is unavoidable. Was an anti-India trade deal the price paid to make scandalous material disappear? Did the government trade away India’s interests just to rescue its rapidly collapsing reputation?” Khera asked on social media.

Financier and convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein died in prison in Manhattan in 2019 before his trial on sex trafficking of minors could begin. The more than three million pages of documents released by the Department of Justice, contains among other stuff, photographs and emails between Epstein and heads of various states and business tycoons across the globe.

Khera said the Congress had a team going through the Epstein documents looking for references to India.

“On February 6, a search for “India” in the Epstein files on the US Department of Justice website returned 484 pages of results. Each page contains 10 documents. We know this because a dedicated team was sifting through files in each page and systematically cataloguing documents of interest from each page number,” Khera wrote.

“Today, if you repeat the process, only 478 pages will show up. This means six pages, roughly 60 files, have disappeared from the search results.”

A joint statement issued by Washington and India said over the weekend that India has offered to cut or eliminate duties on select US agricultural products. It is widely believed that the deal would have some impact on India’s agricultural sector.

The Congress has described the deal as “surrender.”

“They increased the tariff from 3 per cent to 50 per cent and then reduced it to 18 per cent. The government has set a target that in the next five years there will be a bilateral deal of approximately $500 billion, roughly 44 lakh crore. The commerce minister (Piyush Goyal) did not say how much export target India has set,” Khera had said on Saturday.

On Monday, Khera said, “The BJP, usually, unnecessarily loud, has gone eerily silent on the Epstein disclosures. What is the party trying to hide behind the wall of silence?”

On Saturday, India’s external affairs ministry had described the mention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the emails of Epstein as “trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal”.

A former diplomat of India and a business tycoon were allegedly in touch with Epstein, the documents released seem to show. Neither the former diplomat nor the businessman have acknowledged or responded to media articles mentioning the emails between them and the late paedophile.

The Telegraph Online can confirm that the emails between the Indian business tycoon and Epstein are still part of the Epstein documents on the US Department of Justice website as of Monday afternoon.

The office of the Dalai Lama, in a statement over the weekend, said: "Some recent media reports and social media posts concerning the 'Epstein files' are attempting to link His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Jeffrey Epstein. We can unequivocally confirm that His Holiness has never met Jeffrey Epstein or authorised any meeting or interaction with him by anyone on His Holiness's behalf."

Jolts in Norway, Britain

The Epstein files have rocked governments in multiple countries.

Norway's foreign ministry on Sunday said a prominent ambassador, Mona Juul, would step down due to a "serious failure of judgement" over ties to late Epstein.

The ministry earlier this week suspended Juul from her position as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq pending an internal inquiry of links to Epstein. Juul, 66, a former junior government minister, previously represented Norway as ambassador to Israel, Britain and at the UN.

Norway’s foreign ministry said it had also initiated a review of its former grants to the International Peace Institute (IPI), a New York think tank headed by Juul's husband Terje Roed-Larsen until 2020.

Roed-Larsen, 78, who briefly served as a cabinet minister in 1996 under then-Prime Minister Thorbjoern Jagland, has several times apologised for his connection to Epstein.

Juul and Roed-Larsen rose to prominence as part of a small group of diplomats facilitating the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, seen at the time as a breakthrough in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, although peace remained elusive.

Several other prominent Norwegians also had links to Epstein, including Crown Princess Mette-Marit who on Friday apologised again in a statement issued by the palace, notably to the king and queen.

In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, quit on Sunday, saying he took responsibility for advising Starmer to name Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US despite Mandelson’s known links to Epstein.

How Jeffrey Epstein was jailed

The Epstein investigation began in 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at the millionaire's home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Police would identify at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein was paying high-school-age students $200 or $300 to give him sexualised massages.

After the FBI joined the probe, federal prosecutors drafted indictments to charge Epstein and some personal assistants who had arranged the girls' visits and payments.

But instead, then-Miami US attorney Alexander Acosta struck a deal letting Epstein plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Sentenced to 18 months in jail, Epstein was free by mid-2009.

In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted New York federal prosecutors to take a fresh look at the accusations.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019. One month later, he killed himself in his jail cell.

How the FBI investigated Epstein

The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein's bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world's most influential people.

But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records showed.

Videos and photos seized from Epstein's homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands didn't depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in one 2025 memo.

An examination of Epstein's financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, said another internal memo in 2019.

While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he "lent her" to his rich friends, agents couldn't confirm that and found no other victims telling a similar story, the records said.

Summarising the investigation in an email last July, agents said "four or five" Epstein accusers claimed other men or women had sexually abused them. But, the agents said, there "was not enough evidence to federally charge these individuals, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement."