Gadkari

Nagpur, Dec. 2: A seven-year-old girl found dead in a car at BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s home here two years ago had died accidentally, the state CID has concluded in a report that seeks to close the case.

The parents of Yogita Thakre, whose mother Vimal worked as a maid in Gadkari’s home and nearby houses, claim someone tried to molest their daughter and killed her.

They will chalk their course of action after December 23, when a court decides on the CID claim of an “accidental” death.

The CID says the girl accidentally got locked inside the car of Sudhir Dive, Gadkari’s personal secretary and managing director of the Purti group of industries of which the BJP leader is chairperson. It says she must have suffocated while struggling to come out.

The CID report, accessed by The Telegraph, says the inspector in charge of Kotwali police station had wrongly lodged a murder case against unknown persons “because of the pressure from the media and his seniors”.

Yogita’s death had raised a political storm because of the Gadkari connection. The state government exonerated the BJP leader in December 2009.

The Class III student, who had a congenital heart disease and sickle cell anaemia, was found face downwards on the car’s rear seat on the evening of May 19, 2009. Her face, arms and thighs were bruised, says the post-mortem report. Her parents say the CID has failed to answer several questions:

• The car was 4m from the main gate, where a guard was on duty. Why did no one notice her struggles to come out?

• How come Yogita left no recoverable fingerprints on the car’s windows, door handles or horn, as the police claim?

• Why was she bruised?

The CID says the car was a brown Fiat Linea belonging to Dive but the police’s spot report mentions a white Honda CRV used by Gadkari and his family.

The post-mortem report found bloodstains in the girl’s underwear and on her shoulder and thighs, and noted evidence of bleeding from her mouth and nose. It said the injuries were fresh, and the cause of death was homicidal or accidental “smothering”.

Even the investigating officer, R.M. Katole, had said in the FIR that unknown people had covered Yogita’s mouth and nose and murdered her, and dumped her in the car.

The police never collected fingerprint samples from the car. Bombay High Court had rapped the police for lax investigations and handed the case over to the CID in March 2010.

Yogita had probably died an hour or two before Gadkari’s staff noticed the body and called a doctor, who declared her dead at 7pm. The Thakres wonder why the staff hadn’t immediately informed the police. The spot inspection was done well past midnight and the car was seized only 20 days after the incident.

Investigating officer Katole had contacted paediatricians at the government medical college and hospital here where Yogita had been treated for heart disease and sub-acute bacterial endocarditis.

In her reply on May 30, 2009, associate professor Saira Merchant said Yogita had recovered fully from the infection and that her heart disease could not have caused her death in a closed car.

However, some of the evidence went against the molest-and-murder theory. To the police’s questions, the doctors who had conducted the post-mortem wrote that it was difficult to say whether intercourse had been attempted.

They said the absence of bruises or scratches on both sides of the face (as opposed to just one side), nose and the inner surface of the lips went against homicidal smothering. So did the absence of vaginal bleeding.

They dismissed the injury to her private parts, saying: “A small abrasion on the labia is a common finding in girls (from) lower socio-economic strata... (with) bad hygiene of local parts leading to a condition of pruritus vulvae which leads to itching, resulting in abrasion.”