Poonam Mahajan

Mumbai, Oct. 15: Pramod Mahajan’s daughter today broke down in court as she described how she had stumbled on an old, threatening text message on the BJP leader’s cellphone sometime after his murder.

The sender was Praveen Mahajan, Poonam said, accusing her uncle of killing her father. But defence counsel Harshad Ponda was soon on his feet, grilling her.

He asked Poonam if she knew about a computer software that allows backdated messages to be sent to a phone, and alleged that it had been used in this instance.

She kept denying this, turned suddenly towards Praveen and appealed to additional sessions judge Srihari Daware through her tears: “I want justice from this court.”

The older of Pramod’s two children said she had kept a few of the late BJP leader’s belongings, such as his mobile phone, as mementoes. Later, her mother Rekha told her the police needed the cellphone for their investigations.

She said it was then that she took a look and realised it had a text message in Hindi from Praveen, warning her father of dire consequences.

Rekha had told the court that Praveen had sent text messages to Pramod warning him of harm if he did not shell out Rs 1 crore.

Poonam said she had spoken to her father at 7.30am on April 22 last year, minutes before Praveen allegedly shot him in the victim’s 11th-floor flat in Worli. Pramod died at Hinduja Hospital 12 days later.

The daughter said she learnt about the shooting around 7.50pm from her husband Anand Rao, who had got the news from Pramod’s domestic help, Mahesh Wankhede.

Poonam, who lived in an adjacent apartment block, rushed to her father’s home and found him lying blood-spattered on a sofa. She said she did not accompany her husband and uncle Gopinath Munde as they drove the injured man to hospital.

Poonam was accompanied in court by BJP leader Munde’s daughters. With her deposition, the prosecution has completed examining most of its witnesses, who include Rekha, Munde, Pramod’s sister Pradnya Munde and Wankhede.

The judge speeded up the trial after he was transferred on promotion to the Aurangabad bench but was directed by Bombay High Court to finish this case before he joined his new posting. The trial is likely to be completed in a month.