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Regular-article-logo Monday, 22 December 2025

JOGI TO BRING HOME DAUGHTER'S GRAVE 

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FROM SUCHANDANA GUPTA Published 20.11.00, 12:00 AM
Bhopal, Nov. 20 :    Bhopal, Nov. 20:  A grieving father first, a chief minister later. Still coming to terms with the suicide of his only daughter Anusha five months ago, one of the first moves by Chhattisgarh's first leader Ajit Jogi was requesting the Madhya Pradesh government and the church authorities in Indore to allow him to exhume the body and transfer it to Raipur, capital of the new state and the city of her birth. Jogi and his doctor-wife Renuka want their daughter's grave to be near them. Renuka, an ophthalmologist teaching at MGM College of Medical Sciences in Indore, has asked for a transfer to Raipur. The church has already granted permission and though the Indore administration is tight-lipped, sources said the green light has been flashed and the body will be exhumed shortly. For the Jogis, the return to Raipur has brought back happy - and painful - memories. The chief minister had initially refused to move in to his official residence - the district collector's bungalow - as it was in this house that Anusha was born and spent the first few years of her infancy. Jogi, who resigned from the IAS to join politics, was collector of Raipur in the mid-Seventies. Anusha (25), an MBA student in the US who had just two semesters left for getting her degree, had come to India in May to visit her parents. She never returned as on May 12, she killed herself after a tiff with her parents. Anusha was staying with her mother at Renuka's residence in Indore's upmarket Residency area. Her father, then the Congress spokesman based in New Delhi, had come over to Indore to meet her and also to oversee arrangements for Sonia Gandhi's visit on May 12. At the breakfast table that morning, Jogi suggested that Anusha should get married, drawing vehement protests from the girl. The Jogis had been looking for a match for her while she was away in the US. The altercation intensified with Anusha adamant and her parents equally firm. Soon after breakfast, Ajit and Renuka left to make further arrangements for Sonia's visit. Sometime later, a maid walked into Anusha's bedroom and later forced her way into the girl's bathroom to find her hanging from the ceiling. Anusha was buried at the Azad Nagar cemetery. Less than a week after Jogi was sworn in on October 31 midnight, Renuka came to Indore to appeal to the district administration for permission to exhume the body. Sources close to the church said Anusha's body will be exhumed and placed in a bigger coffin and taken to Raipur. Renuka had wanted her daughter to be taken to Raipur on November 18, Anusha's birthday, but the official formalities could not be completed on time. The sources said the date has been tentatively fixed for Wednesday or Thursday.    
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