Nitin Gadkari

Nagpur, Dec. 21: A trial court today asked the Maharashtra CID to probe afresh the death of a seven-year-old girl whose body was found in a car parked at the residence of BJP president Nitin Gadkari.

The court observed that the agency had merely recorded the statements of people instead of finding out the truth about how Yogita Thakre died over two years ago.

It rejected the agency’s conclusion that she must have died “accidentally” after getting “locked inside the car”.

Yogita’s mother Vimal worked as a maid at the Gadkari household and the girl had accompanied her to work hours before the child’s body found on May 19, 2009.

The magistrate seized on apparent discrepancy in the car models and their ownerships mentioned in the spot report (panchnama) of Nagpur police and that of the CID, which took over the case on the directions of the high court following a plea by Yogita’s parents.

The CID claimed the body was found in a Fiat Linea of Sudhir Dive, Gadkari’s personal secretary and managing director of the BJP leader’s Purti group of industries. The police report says it was a white Honda CRV, used by Gadkari and his family.

“It (the CID) showed want of appreciation of the emergent need to get at the truth of the case, throw light on the aspects considered by the HC, reasons of the death of Yogita and difference of car from which the corpse was seized and the reference made to the car in the inquest panchnama (spot report),” magistrate Neelima Patil said today.

The arms, face and thighs of Yogita, a Class III student with a congenital heart disease and sickle cell anaemia, were bruised, according to the post-mortem report.

The report had also found bloodstains in the girl’s underwear and on her shoulder and thighs, and evidence of bleeding from her mouth and nose. It said the injuries were fresh but left the cause of death open-ended by saying it could be homicidal or accidental “smothering”.

R.M. Katole, the officer who investigated the case, had said in the FIR that unknown people had covered Yogita’s mouth and nose and murdered her before dumping the body in the car.

But the police never collected fingerprint samples from the car and took weeks to recover the vehicle.

The high court had rapped the police for the laxity while handing the case to the CID, though the force’s larger conclusion that the girl was murdered was closer to the parents’ claims.

The CID, however, said in its closure report that the case of murder was registered by the city police “under pressure from the media and higher-ups”.

The girl’s parents, who have alleged that “someone tried to molest” her before she was killed, are now contemplating moving the high court again, this time seeking a CBI probe, family sources said.

Yesterday, they had staged a sit-in during the winter session of the Assembly here, calling the CID probe an “eyewash”.

The CID recorded the statements of about a hundred people but made no arrests. It filed a “C” summary — the official jargon for closure summary — in the trial court December 2010 seeking permission to wind up the case, nine months after the high court assigned it the probe.