NEW DELHI, Aug 24: The brother of the BJP leader Sonali Phogat who died in a sea-side village in Goa on Tuesday, has filed a formal complaint with the Goa Police claiming that she was murdered by two of her associates and it was not a natural death caused by heart attack as police believed.
Ms Phogat’s brother Rinku Dhaka alleged that a short while before her death, she had spoken to her mother, sister, and brother-in-law during which she sounded disturbed and complained against her two colleagues and had indicated that something weird was happening.
He also claimed that the CCTV cameras, laptop, and other crucial things from her farmhouse in Haryana have gone missing after her death. Sonali Phogat (42), the BJP leader from Hisar in Haryana who had found fame on Tik Tok, was “brought dead” at the St Anthony Hospital at Anjuna in North Goa on Tuesday morning, a police official earlier said, adding that she died of a suspected heart attack.
The Anjuna police had registered a case of unnatural death. Ms Phogat’s family members arrived in Goa on Tuesday night. Dhaka in his complaint filed with Anjuna police in Goa claimed that two of Ms Phogat’s associates murdered her in Goa. “We had asked her to stay away from them and return to Hisar the next day (after Ms Phogat spoke to her mother),” Dhaka told reporters outside the Anjuna police station.
He claimed the police have refused to register a First Information Report (FIR) against the two persons. “If the FIR is not filed against them, we will not allow the post mortem to be conducted in Goa,” he said. Dhaka said the family members would prefer the post mortem to be conducted at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi or at AIIMS, Jaipur.
“She was a BJP leader for the last 15 years. We will also appeal to the Prime Minister to help us in getting justice for her,” he said.
(Manas Dasgupta)
