Former Haryana Minister and high-flying business tycoon Gopal Goyal Kanda, who has been accused of abetting the suicide of his former employee Geetika Sharma, was on Tuesday slapped with fresh charges under the Information Technology(IT) Act.
The charges were framed by the city police after it emerged that the accused had allegedly sent a false electronic message to the 23-year-old Geetika in order to harass her.
“Section 66 of the IT Act (sending information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character or false or to deceive or to mislead) has been invoked against Kanda,” said Special Commissioner of Police (law and order) Dharmendra Kumar. He added that during the investigations and raids, the police had seized hard disks and relevant documents which revealed that the accused had forged details for sending the message to Geetika, with the aim of harassing her.
According to Kumar, the police might seek the court’s permission to run a lie-detector or brain mapping test on Kanda as he had refused to open up to the investigators. “We have collected a lot of evidence against Kanda,” he said. Meanwhile, in the same case, a local court on Tuesday denied permission to the police for securing the custody of Kanda’s aide and co-accused Aruna Chaddha. The police had sought the custody of Chaddha on the grounds that they needed to confront her with some fresh facts and documents recovered after Kanda’s arrest. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate D K Jangala, who remanded Chaddha in judicial custody till August 30, had on Monday rejected the police request for permission to confront Chaddha with Kanda.
Geetika, who had earlier worked in Kanda’s now-defunct MDLR Airlines, was found hanging at her Ashok Vihar house on August 4 morning.