Mumbai, March 06: Dissatisfied with the police investigation into the death of Yogita Thakare, the seven-year-old daughter of BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s maid, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court on
Friday handed over the case to the state CID.
Vimal Thakare, the girl’s mother, had filed a petition more than three months ago seeking a CBI investigation. A bench of justice AP Lavande and justice Pradeep Varale, however, directed the state CID to investigate the matter.
Yogita’s body was found in the boot of Gadkari’s car parked at his Nagpur home in May 2009. Gadkari, who was the BJP’s state chief then, was not in the city when the body was found. Jayant Patil, the then home minister, gave a statement in the legislative assembly that Gadkari had nothing to do with the death.
The girl’s family, however, suspected foul play. Her mother moved the high court alleging loopholes in the police investigations. She wanted a CBI inquiry into her daughter’s death.
A guard informed Vimal Thakare about the incident after a local doctor, called by Gadkari’s office employees, pronounced her dead. The vehicle was parked just four metres away from the main gate where a guard was on duty the day the body was found. He is one of the crucial witnesses in the case.
“The court rejected a CBI inquiry, but gave it to the CID,” Dr Anjan De, complainant’s lawyer, said. “We are still to get a detailed copy of the verdict.”
Prosecution lawyer Nitin Sambre said the court found discrepancies on two counts — the car’s make and the different perceptions of the cause of her death. While the post-mortem report said Yogita died because of suffocation, Dr Saira Merchant, the head of Indira Gandhi
Medical College’s paediatric department, said in her report that Yogita could not have died of suffocation.
The high court bench pulled up the Nagpur Police over
loopholes in the investigations — from the spot inquest to the
interrogations of Gadkari’s employees.
Yogita, it came up during one of the hearings, was undergoing treatment for sickle cell anaemia and congenital heart disease. The prosecution maintained during the hearing that the girl’s death was natural and there was no foul play.
–Agencies–