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CBI charges Sonali Phogat’s manager, his assistant for her murder: Official
The CBI has filed a charge sheet in connection with Haryana BJP leader and actor Sonali Phogat’s death in Goa on August 23 and charged her manager Sudhir Sangvan and his assistant, Sukhwinder Singh, for murder.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a charge sheet in connection with Haryana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and actor Sonali Phogat’s death in Goa on August 23 and charged her manager Sudhir Sangvan and his assistant, Sukhwinder Singh, for murder, according to people aware of the details.
Both Sangvan and Singh had accompanied Phogat to Goa and have been accused of forcibly administering methamphetamine (MDMA) to her while partying at Curlies restaurant on the night she died.
The CBI, which took over the case in early September amid demands by Phogat’s family and the state government, has charged the duo under sections 302 (murder), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherence of common intention) and 36 (effects caused partly by act and partly by omission) of Indian Penal Code, an official at Mapusa court said.
“The charge sheet was filed by the CBI, New Delhi on Monday evening before the judicial magistrate at Mapusa in North Goa. The matter has been posted for hearing on December 5. The two accused have been charged of murder,” the official said, seeking anonymity.
HT is yet to review a copy of the charge sheet.
Phogat was brought dead to St Anthony’s Hospital at Anjuna in the wee hours of August 23, after she was allegedly drugged with MDMA by Sangvan and Singh while spending the previous night together at Curlies restaurant and bar.
A day later, her brother, Rinku Dhaka, filed a complaint against the two men at Anjuna Police Station.
While the case was initially registered as an unnatural death due to a heart attack, it was upgraded to murder after a post mortem revealed “multiple blunt force injuries” on her body.
Police later said that investigation revealed that Sangwan had laced Phogat’s drink with MDMA. The BJP leader spent nearly two hours in the club’s washroom where she was vomiting and was seen staggering out of the club at around 4.30am.
Sangwan and Singh were arrested on August 26 for the alleged murder.
While probing the case, Goa Police had arrested five people. Besides Sangwan and Singh, Curlies owner Edwin Nunes, Dattaprasad Gaonkar, a bell boy at Grand Leoney Resort where Phogat and her team were staying and who has been accused of supplying MDMA to Sangwan and Singh and Rama Mandrekar, from whom Gaonkar procured the drug were arrested in a separate case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.
Nunes, Gaonkar and Mandrekar are out on bail.
The state government had written to the Centre for transferring the case to the CBI.
