Sonali Phogat death: Family alleges murder; Goa CM orders thorough investigation
Her brother Rinku Dhaka alleged that Phogat’s manager Sudir Sangwan and assistant Sukhwinder Singh were responsible for the ‘murder’
Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant on Wednesday ordered a “thorough investigation” into the passing away of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sonali Phogat, but said that preliminary reports from doctors and the police indicate cardiac arrest to be the reason behind her death.
However, her brother Rinku Dhaka filed a complaint with the Anjuna police alleging ‘a preplanned murder’ and said he will not grant consent to conduct post-mortem until an FIR was registered against the culprits.
“I reached Goa at 8 pm yesterday and on my own I have done some inquiries and it is not a normal death. It is a preplanned murder. I have come to the Anjuna police station to file a complaint and for the past three hours I have been standing here with this complaint but no action has been taken based on it. The FIR has not even been lodged. They are saying that they will first do the post-mortem and then consider registering the FIR,” Dhaka told reporters outside the police station.
“The Goa Police are very relaxed about it and are not cooperating with us [family]. They have just kept the complaint, but taken no legal action. Unless our FIR is registered, we will not [allow the] conduct [of] the post-mortem. If the investigation is not being done properly here, we will do a fresh post-mortem at AIIMS, either in Delhi or Jaipur,” he added.
Dhaka further alleged that Phogat’s manager Sudir Sangwan and assistant Sukhwinder Singh were responsible for the ‘murder’.
“I believe that it is Sudhir Sangwan and one Sukhwinder Singh. They have been planning this for many days. On the day the murder took place, she had spoken to her mother, her sister, me and others…from those conversations, we are very sure that she was in trouble and that anything could happen to her at any time. We had asked her to take it easy and that we’ll file a police complaint the next day. But she passed away at night,” Dhaka alleged.
Sawant, however, emphasised that investigations were on to detect any foul play.
“As soon as I got to know (about the incident) yesterday, I spoke to the DGP and told him that he should do a thorough investigation. The post-mortem report is awaited, but what the DGP has initially informed is that preliminary it looks like a heart attack. Investigation is going on,” the chief minister said.
The BJP leader was brought to St Anthony’s Hospital in Anjuna on Tuesday, not far from where she was staying, in an unconscious state but doctors declared upon arrival that she succumbed to suspected heart attack. Her body was later shifted to the morgue at the Goa Medical College and Hospital.
