Police to use Lalita’s suicide note, audios against Rohit, relatives
Lalita was found hanging on Monday night at her parents’ home in west Delhi’s Nangloi. The suicide note was recovered from Lalita’s pant pocket.
New Delhi
Delhi Police will use Lalita Dabas’ suicide note and her two audio recordings of two hours and 23 minutes as her dying declaration against her husband, national-level kabaddi player Rohit Kumar, and his family members in the dowry death case.
Lalita was found hanging on Monday night at her parents’ home in west Delhi’s Nangloi. The suicide note was recovered from Lalita’s pant pocket.
Lalita wrote the pass code to unlock her mobile phone, a gift from her husband, in which she left two voice messages. One of them was two hours long. In the note and audio messages, she accused Rohit, who played for Bengaluru Bulls in the recently concluded Pro-Kabaddi League, and her in-laws of physical and mental torture for dowry and a share in her father’s property.
A senior police officer privy to the case told HT that the suicide note and two audio recordings will be sent to a forensic laboratory to tests their authenticity. “The woman’s dying declaration in the form of her suicide note and voice messages and other available circumstantial evidences make it a fit case of dowry death,” said the officer.
Rohit was arrested on Friday afternoon from south Mumbai, almost 24 hours after he uploaded a four and half minute video on Facebook, claiming innocence.
“We will produce Rohit in the court and seek his custody to probe his role in his wife’s suicide. His wife made several accusations against him,” said Dependra Pathak, joint commissioner of police (southwest).
In her voice messages, the officer said, Lalita mentioned that on one occasion her father-in-law pulled her hair, kicked and punched her and Rohit watched it all like a spectator. Lalita is heard saying that she did not report the torture to her parents or police because she was concerned for Rohit’s career. She was also heard saying how Rohit dropped her some 400 metres away from her parents’ home
“I could not believe how somebody can assault me like this. How can someone bring somebody’s daughter to his home and ill-treat her... Rohit talk to yourself and think how you watched me being assaulted…,” Lalita said in the audio message released by her family.
The kabaddi player, who joined the navy in 2009 under the sports quota, will also be quizzed about why he had been evading investigation for the past three days. Rohit did not attend his wife’s last rites and had switched off his mobile phone.