Tiwari

Hyderabad, Dec. 27: A Hyderabad lawyer today filed a police complaint accusing N.D. Tiwari of sexually abusing minor girls, blackmail and misuse of office.

V. Lakshminarayan, who practises in Andhra Pradesh High Court, has said in his complaint that Tiwari should be criminally prosecuted now that he does not enjoy legal immunity after quitting as governor over the sex scandal.

Lakshminarayan has accused Tiwari’s officer on special duty, Aryandra Sharma, and Raj Bhavan security officials of having abetting the alleged scandal.

Asked about the complaint, Hyderabad police commissioner B. Prasada Rao said legal opinion on the prospects of arresting and prosecuting Tiwari was being taken and an FIR would be filed if the advice suggested that could be done.

The complaint came on a day President Pratibha Patil accepted Tiwari’s resignation. Chhattisgarh governor E.S.L. Narasimhan has been given additional charge of Andhra.

The police are quizzing Raj Bhavan staff about the exact number of girls who may have been brought to the governor’s residence and their whereabouts now.

Sources said, however, that the sting operation on Tiwari may have been the fallout of a failure by him and officer Sharma to deliver a promised mining deal in Andhra.

The deal, the sources said, was meant to go to Radhika, the woman whose voice could be heard in the sting and whose other name is said to be Durga Arora. She is reportedly from Uttarakhand, Tiwari’s home state.

After the scandal broke on Friday, Raj Bhavan counsel R.S. Jandhyala had said Radhika was a labour contractor from Uttarakhand involved in a mud-slinging operation” against Tiwari.