Breaking her silence over her son's alleged hate speech, Varun Gandhi's [Images] mother and former union minister Maneka Gandhi on Thursday attacked the Congress, saying the party was taking up the case to 'conceal its anti-Sikh acts'.

"It has become imperative for the Congress to show such tapes (of hate speeches) to conceal their anti-Sikh acts," Gandhi told a regional news channel.

"It is the Congress which should be ashamed of giving party tickets to people involved in the anti-Sikh riots, in which thousands of Sikhs were killed," she added.

Her tirade comes in the wake of the Congress submitting another clip to the Election Commission, which depicts Varun Gandhi speaking against the Sikh community.

"The Election Commission has also dismissed the tape as a fake one and it actually is a fake one because Varun has not spoken anything like that," Gandhi claimed.

"I am proud of being a Sikh. Sikhism was founded to defend Hindus and there is hardly any difference between a Sikh and a Hindu," the estranged Nehru-Gandhi family member said.