Fresh trouble for Gadkari in Yogita murder case

The first class judicial magistrate court today rejected the closure report into the Yogita Thakre murder case which yells fresh trouble for former BJP President Nitin Gadkari, Pradip Kumar Maitra reports.

There seems no end to the problems of former BJP president leader Nitin Gadkari. The first class judicial magistrate court on Thursday rejected the closure report into the Yogita Thakre murder case and directed the state CID to carry out relevant investigation as requested by the counsel of victim’s parents.

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The girl’s parents opposed CID’s closure report and raised 23 objections, citing various discrepancies and charged the agency with protecting real culprits. Seven-year-old Yogita Thakre’s body was found in the boot of a car in the compound of Gadkari’s Nagpur residence in May 2009. Gadkari was on a flight to Nagpur when the body was found while his wife, Kanchan, was at Ramtek, some 50 kilometres from Nagpur.

This is the second time when the court rejected the closure report of the state CID that investigated the alleged murder of Yogita and ordered a fresh investigation.

The city police had initially registered a case of accidental death and later converted it to a case of murder. Yogita’s parents contended that she was murdered and did not die accidentally as the CID probe concluded. The postmortem report showed "smothering" as the cause of death and also mentioned several abrasions and wounds on the girl’s body.

Earlier, the state CID probed the case after a judicial magistrate first class rejected the closure report in Yogita case in December 2011 and directed the agency to carry out further investigation into the mystery death of the girl. In its closure report, the CID probe stated that Yogita was neither raped nor murdered, but she died accidentally.

After the lower court rejected the C report, the state CID again submitted its closure report before the court a few months ago and said that the FIR was registered by mistake and reiterated that it was an accidental death.

While rejecting the closure report, the JMFC judge, Neelima Patil on Thursday said that the investigation was not done as per the order passed by the high court and directed a fresh investigation. The high court had handed over the probe to the state CID in March 2010 from the city police on a plea filed by Yogita’s parents Ashok and Vimal Thakre.

They demanded a CBI probe and narco test of Gadkari, his personal assistant, Sudhir Deulgaonkar, car driver Manohar Panse and the then police inspector Kotwali police station RM Katole. The high court had asked the CID to consider apprehensions raised by Yogita’s parents.

The body of Yogita Thakre, daughter of a domestic help, Vimal, was found in Gadkari’s car at his Mahal residence in the evening on May 19, 2009.

Yogita was missing since morning.

The city police initially registered an accidental death in this regard.

According to the girl’s father, the police had not taken cognizance of the charge that the death of their daughter could be from reasons other than suffocation. They said that they suspected the hand of a police guard on the duty at the Gadkari residence in the death of their daughter. They had alleged that the investigation was going on without seriousness of the purpose. Neither had the guard on duty being taken into custody nor the car in which she was found dead, seized by the police.

Her parents filed a writ petition before the Nagpur bench of Bombay high court on May 25, 2009 demanding a CBI probe into the mysterious death of their daughter. This had led to register a case of 302 by the police against an unidentified person.