Wife, daughter of official held for corruption commit suicide

NEW DELHI: The wife and daughter of a senior corporate affairs ministry official, who was arrested for corruption by the CBI, allegedly committed suicide at their

NEW DELHI: The wife and daughter of a senior corporate affairs ministry official, who was arrested for corruption by the CBI, allegedly committed suicide at their east Delhi home on Tuesday afternoon.

HT Image

Corporate affairs director general BK Bansal’s 58-year-old wife Satyabala and daughter Neha, 28, were found hanging from ceiling fans in two separate rooms.

The CBI arrested Bansal on Saturday for allegedly accepting a bribe of 20 lakh from Mumbai-based fir m Elder Pharmaceutical, which has been accused of duping 24,000 investors of 176 crore through a fraudulent investment scheme. His son, Yogesh, a real estate dealer, is under the lens too.

The mother-daughter duo was probably driven to suicide by the shame and stigma attached to the corruption taint on their loved one, a source said.

“In their notes, the two mentioned that after the CBI action they lost the will to live. But they wrote nobody should be blamed for their death,” special commissioner of police (law and order, north) SBK Singh said.

The shame and distress motive gained credibility from the “suicide notes” found in their Neelkanth Apartments flat in east Delhi’s IP Extension, which were written and signed in Hindi. They wrote that the decision to end their lives was their own.

The CBI had been conducting searches at Bansal’s home since Saturday, the apartment’s security guard Anil Jha said. “More than 20 CBI officers were present there for 12 to 14 hours at a stretch. On Monday, the team arrived at 3pm and left around 5 the next morning.”

Son Yogesh was not at home, and the CBI said his whereabouts were not known. “We are deeply shocked and saddened by the incident. It may be mentioned here that both the deceased were neither accused nor questioned or summoned in the investigation. The matter is being looked into by local police,” a CBI spokesperson said.

A domestic help was the first to find Satyabala hanging from a fan with a dupatta around her neck, deputy commissioner of police (east), Rishipal, said. “Satyabala’s bedroom door was ajar. Neha’s bedroom door had to be broken. She too had hanged herself with a dupatta.”

The two were taken to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital, where doctors pronounced them dead on arrival.

The CBI has arrested four people, including Bansal, the senior- most officer of the Indian Corporate Law Service, and Delhi-based middleman Vishwadeep Bansal. Bansal was caught taking Rs 9 lakh on Saturday from the middleman representing the firm, which has some 1,000-odd complaints against it.

Anuj Saxena, a television actor, is the chief operating officer of the company that had allegedly duped people by floating a fixed deposit investment scheme, offering lucrative interest rates that ranged from 9.5% to 11.5% for up to three years.

The agency suspects Bansal was involved in other irregularities as well since he got elevated to the post of director general last year, said a source.

The CBI teams found Rs 56 lakh and documents related to 20-odd properties in his home. Bansal’s son, in whose name several of the properties were bought, is yet to join the probe.

A neighbour alleged that Yogesh too was in CBI custody for questioning, a charge the agency denied.