(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.