my uttarakhand news Bureau
Dehradun, 7 Jan: State Congress President Ganesh Godiyal today accused the BJP government of evading a fair investigation into the Ankita Bhandari murder. He made this allegation during a press conference at the Congress Bhawan here today. The PCC Chief claimed that Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami appeared visibly uncomfortable when reporters questioned him yesterday about fresh revelations in the case. Godiyal also claimed that the Chief Minister’s bid to turn the questions back on the media laid bare his real motives. He thanked the media for sustaining public focus on the matter before laying out key facts.
Godiyal reminded that two days prior to the recovery of the body, the resort owner had lodged a missing person report at the local Patwari outpost. There, pressure was allegedly mounted on Ankita’s father to buy into a fabricated story of her elopement. Even as the Patwari pressed him to sign documents endorsing this version, the truth surfaced after the body of Ankita Bhandari was fished out from the canal and revealing messages between Ankita and her friend came to light.
Godiyal today demanded legal proceedings against the alleged VIP culprit in the case. He again pressed the ADG – Law & Order to respond to the queries he had raised ten days earlier. The Congress leader asked on whose explicit instructions a bulldozer was dispatched to Vanantara Resort in the dead of night immediately after the body’s recovery. He demanded that, if the government-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) had taken statements from the bulldozer operators, those details should be shared with Uttarakhand’s citizens. He further queried whether the SIT knew that the demolition of the victim’s room at the resort occurred at 2:30 a.m., and if the CM’s initial claim of credit for the action was also mentioned in the SIT report.
Godiyal also questioned if the SIT had subjected the WhatsApp exchanges between Ankita and her friend to forensic scrutiny, conversations in which she had plainly spoken of intense pressure to render ‘special services’ to a VIP. On the police assertion that a CBI inquiry stood impossible as the court had turned it down, he demanded to know why the government resisted a CBI probe so fiercely when all the parties involved were pressing for it. He also sought clarity on whether the probe agency had examined BJP MLA Renu Bisht’s involvement in razing the victim’s bedroom and what conclusions had emerged.
Godiyal asserted that Ankita’s father had time and again alleged, even in a recent television interview, that the Patwari had coerced him into silence and backing the accused by passing off the murder as suicide. He charged that the SIT had offered no convincing rebuttal to these claims of intimidation by revenue police and the accused side. Godiyal said the police appeals for public-submitted evidence only fuelled doubts, particularly given the known role of ruling party members in evidence destruction. He urged the administration to explain why those who tampered with the crime scene remained outside the investigation’s purview. He wrapped up by declaring that the Congress’s questions lingered unanswered as BJP leaders resorted to misleading press briefings to hoodwink the public.
Among those present at the press conference were former MLA Manoj Rawat, outgoing Media Chairman Rajiv Maharshi, State General Secretary Rajendra Shah, Spokesperson Dr Pratima Singh, and City President Dr Jaswinder Singh Gogi.
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