Pawan Khera’s allegations against Himanta Biswa Sarma’s wife have multiple inconsistencies

Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera on April 5 unleashed a barrage of allegations against Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sharma, claiming she holds passports of three foreign countries, owns undeclared properties in Dubai and is linked to a company in the United States purportedly worth over Rs 52,000 crore. The charges, made at a press conference just four days before Assam goes to the polls, are politically explosive, but a preliminary investigation by India Today NE, based on publicly available records and the very documents produced by Khera, has found significant inconsistencies that cast serious doubt on the veracity of the claims.

The Allegations

Khera’s first charge concerned foreign passports. He claimed that Riniki Bhuyan Sharma holds travel documents from three countries — the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Antigua and Barbuda. According to him, the UAE document, described as a Golden Card, was issued on March 14, 2022, and is valid until March 2027. The Antigua and Barbuda passport, he said, was issued in August 2021 and is valid until 2031, while the Egyptian passport was issued in February 2022. Khera underlined what he called the irony of the Chief Minister's wife holding passports from two Muslim-majority countries while Sarma himself routinely questions the nationalism of Indian Muslims. Since India does not permit dual citizenship, Khera asked whether Riniki also held an Indian passport and, if so, whether her Indian citizenship was valid when she allegedly held documents from three other nations.

The second set of allegations pertained to undeclared properties in Dubai. Khera claimed that Riniki Bhuyan Sharma owns two immovable properties in the Al Barsha South Fourth area of the emirate, neither of which was disclosed in the Chief Minister’s election affidavit—a potential violation of mandatory asset declaration norms that require candidates to list all properties held by themselves, their spouses and dependents. 

To back his claim, Khera displayed what he described as official title deeds from the Dubai Land Department and publicly read out the addresses, inviting verification by authorities and the media. The first property, he said, is Flat 203 in May Residence Tower 1, spanning approximately 83.54 square metres, allegedly purchased around 2024 for about AED 730,000 (roughly Rs 1.65 crore) and registered in Riniki's name. The second, described as Hotel Room 224 in Avalon Tower, measures about 23.25 square metres and was allegedly acquired around 2022 for approximately AED 735,000 (roughly Rs 1.66 crore), with the documents referencing “M Group — RINIKI BHUYAN SARMA” as the buyer. 

The third and most dramatic allegation involved a US connection. Khera claimed that Riniki Bhuyan Sharma is linked to a company registered in Wyoming, a state he pointed out offers no state income tax and provides privacy and secrecy to non-resident Americans, with an annual budget of $3,467,890,123. He produced what he described as a company resolution dated December 5, 2025, which allegedly proposed the allocation of that budget for starting a hotel business in the US under the name “RINIKIBHUYANHOTELS”. The same meeting, according to the minutes, decided to distribute a total of $5,673,455,689, approximately Rs 52,000 crore, among the company’s three members.

India Today NE Fact-Check

India Today NE immediately undertook a preliminary investigation based on publicly available records and the documents produced by Khera and the Congress party. The findings raise serious questions about the authenticity of the evidence presented.

The passport documents: The UAE document circulated by Khera is an Emirates ID card, not a passport. Multiple anomalies were found in the documents. In a standard Emirates ID, the four digits following the prefix 784 in the ID number typically represent the holder’s birth year. In the document produced by Khera, there is a mismatch. The Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) expiry date does not conform to the standard YYMMDD format. More critically, the MRZ nationality code on the card does not match the nationality stated on the front of the card. While the front of the card lists Riniki’s nationality as Egyptian, the MRZ code reads ATG, the code for Antigua and Barbuda. In the purported Egyptian passport, too, the MRZ country code corresponds to India, not Egypt. 

For the record, Riniki Bhuyan Sharma holds a valid Indian passport, which expires in 2029, and her date of birth as recorded in her Indian passport does not match the dates given in the allegedly foreign documents.

The Dubai properties: When India Today NE attempted to verify the properties using the title deed numbers provided by Khera on the Dubai Land Department’s official portal (dubailand.gov.ae), where all property records in the emirate are publicly accessible, no matching records were found.
The US companies: This is where the most damning inconsistency lies. Khera produced records of two companies. The first, Hrinikinandi LLC, a name he claimed is a blend of Himanta, Riniki and the couple’s son Nandil, is indeed registered in Wyoming, and its records are available on the state’s official business registry (sos.wyo.gov). 

However, the company was incorporated on April 3, 2026, just two days before Khera made his allegations. No financial records for the company are available. India Today NE has written to Andrew Pierce, the registered agent, who helped incorporate the company, seeking details of the individuals involved.

The second company, RINIKIBHUYANSARMA Asset Collective LLC, which Khera claimed had an annual budget of Rs 52,000 crore, presents an even bigger problem. Despite being purportedly registered in Wyoming, no record of this company exists on the state’s official business registry.

The most glaring inconsistency, however, is a matter of basic chronology. The minutes of the meeting of RINIKIBHUYANSARMA Asset Collective LLC that Khera produced are dated December 5, 2025, and list Hrinikinandi LLC as a participant in that meeting. But Hrinikinandi LLC did not exist in December 2025. It was incorporated only on April 3, 2026, making it impossible for it to have been part of any meeting nearly four months earlier.

Also, Riniki Bhuyan Sharma’s name is misspelt in all the documents. She spells her surname as Sharma, not Sarma, as written across the papers produced by Khera.

These are preliminary findings. The allegations are politically charged, coming as they do on the eve of the Assam assembly elections. India Today NE will continue to investigate the authenticity of the documents and the claims and will update this report as more details emerge.