Father seeks justice for daughter

NEW DELHI: On November 19, 2008, 24-year-old Preeti Sharma left her office in Haldwani, Uttarakhand, for home in the evening. It was the last time she was seen alive. A day later, her body was discovered in a field near her Moti Nagar home. Not satisfied with the police probe into his daughter's death, Preeti's father came to the Capital recently to demand a CBI investigation into the alleged gangrape and murder.
Preeti's murder sparked off mass protests in Haldwani, and locals went on to form a Committee for Struggle Against Preeti Sharma Gangrape and Murder.Members of the committee accompanied Preeti's father to the Capital.
Meanwhile, 10 days after the murder, the Haldwani police arrested one Bhaskar Joshi (22) and claimed to have cracked the case. The police said Joshi tried to molest Preeti, and when she resisted, he killed her. Despite several loopholes being pointed out and largescale protests, the police stuck to their theory.
Incidentally, the state government recommended a CBI inquiry into the matter in December 2008. Speaking to Times City, Preeti's father Hem Chand Sharma said, "The state police has been bought over by some powerful and influential local politicians."
Preeti lived with her aunt in Haldwani while the rest of the family was in Nainital. She went missing on November 19 while returning from her Jet-King office where she had been working as a counsellor since November 1. "The circumstances under which her body was found suggests that she was gangraped and then murdered. But the local police did not conduct any forensic examination and collected evidence from the crime site with naked hands. They destroyed evidence," alleged Hem Chand, a farmer from Nainital.
When contacted, SP (Haldwani) Mukesh Chauhan said, "We have arrested one person for the murder. There was no evidence to suggest that Preeti had been raped. It was a crime of passion and Joshi tried to rape her but when he failed, he killed her. The accused was nabbed after sustained investigation by Special Operation Group (SOG) and local police teams."
Chauhan added that if the CBI did not take up the probe, a chargesheet would soon be filed against Joshi. "There were no loopholes in the investigation," he insisted.
Meanwhile, Tika Singh, a member of the newly-formed committee said, "The police colluded with some local politicians who had lost local body elections two months before the crime and wanted to teach the residents a lesson. Though five people had been picked up for questioning, they were later let off."
Refusing to accept that only Joshi was responsible for Preeti's murder, Hem Chand said, "It is not possible for one person to commit such a brutal crime. Moreover, the statements given by Joshi were contradictory. He spoke about the route through which he took Preeti to the farmhouse but not a single bush had been disturbed on the way. However, the place where Preeti's body was found had several marks of struggle."
He alleged that while the cops recovered some of Preeti's belongings from the spot, some articles were missing. However, when a copy of the list was given to the family, it included belongings which were not found from the spot, raising the family's suspicion. "The postmortem report did not mention any sexual assault but again the condition of her body and clothes clearly pointed to gangrape," he alleged.