New Delhi, Aug 24 (IANS) Delhi Police have “enough evidence” against arrested former Haryana minister Gopal Goyal Kanda and his employee Aruna Chaddha to implicate them for abetment in the suicide of former flight attendant Geetika Sharma, police sources said Friday.
Kanda, who is in police custody the past seven days, will appear in court Saturday. Delhi Police are to seek his custody again for further questioning and to piece together the evidence against him, a senior police official told IANS.
Police are planning to question Ankita Singh, a former employee of Kanda’s now defunct MDLR Airlines, and Nupur Mehta, a Bollywood starlet who worked as vice-president at MDLR Airlines in 2007. Kanda and Ankita were in a relationship and he was close to Nupur, the police said.
“Nupur Mehta has been sent a notice asking her to appear before Delhi Police. But she has not responded till now. Ankita, who has been traced in Singapore, is likely to come to Delhi by Aug 26. She will also be called for questioning,” the official told IANS.
Ankita’s name was mentioned in Geetika’s two-page suicide note as one of the women who drove her to suicide.
Ankita, a dancer by profession, was spotted by Kanda during one of her ‘mujra’ performances at his Gurgaon farmhouse. Kanda got intimate with her since then.
Piecing together the case details, police have found that Kanda had a fancy for beautiful women and loved to be surrounded by them, the source said.
Co-accused Aruna Chaddha, an HR manager in MDLR, told the police that even after the airlines wound up in 2009, 60 women employees of MDLR Airlines continued to work for Kanda in different capacities in his various companies.
Nupur Mehta is reported to have said that of Kanda’s 39 companies, 20 had women at the top-most posts.
According to interviews Mehta has given to the media, Geetika was recruited in 2007 when she was 17. Kanda was watching the entire interview proceedings on CCTV camera in another room. He called Geetika to his room after the interview was over and appointed her as a trainee cabin crew, Mehta is reported to have said.
Mehta also said that Geetika and Ankita were both possessive of Kanda. They were jealous of each other’s proximity to Kanda and had even fought.
When Ankita worked in Kanda’s Goa-based casino, Geetika had filed an FIR against her and also taken away her bag which had her laptop and passport. However, the FIR was later quashed when she returned her bag, Mehta has said.
Shivroop, assistant human resource manager in the now-defunct MDLR Airlines, was detained by police on Thursday.
Shivroop is the one behind sending a fake email to Dubai-based Emirates Airlines where Geetika got a job after MDLR closed down claiming that she was involved in criminal cases, according to police. “Geetika had to return to India after quitting her job in Dubai after the email,” said the police source.
The source said that the draft email was sent from Chaddha’s mail ID to Shivroop before it was sent to the Emirates from a fake ID.
However, Kanda has blamed Aruna Chaddha for Geetika’s suicide during his seven-day police questioning.
Sources said Kanda told investigators that he was not in touch with Geetika since 45 days before her death on Aug 4-5 night. He also claimed that it was Chaddha who made several calls to Geetika in the days preceding her suicide.
“He claimed he had never given such directions to Chaddha,” the police source said.
Geetika’s family is said to have told police that Chaddha had called them up on Aug 3, the day before their daughter hanged herself at her Ashok Vihar apartment. Geetika’s mother tried to call Kanda on Aug 4 to ask him something around 10 p.m. but he did not attend the call.
“Police are planning to seek extension of Kanda’s police custody which ended Friday. He will be produced before court Saturday and police may demand for another seven days’ police custody,” said a police officer.
(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.k@ians.in)
