Tanwar Case Report Contains Little To Incriminate Kesari

Congress president Sitaram Kesari was questioned on March 1 in connection with the murder of Central Government Health Service (CGHS) doctor Surender Tanwar. Kesari acknowledged that Tanwar used to treat him sometimes but denied that he had given an AICC jeep to Tanwar for a couple of months.

According to the status report on the investigation, Tanwars widow, Kaveri, told the police her husband had looked worried and sad after spending half an hour with Kesari at around 9 pm on October 26, 1993, two days before his murder. It says Tanwar looked worried after a phone call earlier in the evening and went out on the verandah to smoke. At 9 pm, he went to see Kesari after a second telephone call.

 

Nothing else in the report, prepared for the Delhi High Court, seems to incriminate Kesari; the only other politician named is an MP called Swami Sureshanand. The sting, however, is in the statement that the Delhi Police has established a special investigating team, comprising two ACPs and four inspectors, to re-examine the case.

A number of senior Congress leaders have feared the investigation of this case. It has come to light over the past few months. Kesaris bete noire in the Congress Working Committee, Rajesh Pilot, has written two letters to Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, asking that the investigation be re-opened.

The affidavit states that the SIT was established on the instructions of the Commissioner of Police on April 2.

That was the day RK Kakkar took over from Nikhil Kumar as the commissioner. The case had been closed in 1994 as unsolved. No politician was named in the final report then.

The government had been asked by the Delhi High Court to report progress in the murder investigation yesterday. In the morning, it asked for time, promising to submit the status report by Monday. The court fixed May 5 for the next hearing.

In the afternoon, Kamini Jaiswal, the advocate arguing the public interest litigation which seeks the re-opening of the investigation, received a copy of a 21-page report, containing a chronology of the investigation.

Jaiswal said she was not sure whether the affidavit had also been filed in the court registry. If it hasnt, the government could later claim that a copy of an affidavit that was prepared but later changed was erroneously given to her. The affidavit was submitted on behalf of the Union of India by SK Aggarwal, standing counsel for the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

An AICC functionary said the partys activists had checked that the report had not been filed until the registry closed. They had hoped to ensure over the weekend that the report did not contain anything damaging against Kesari.

In an interview to ABNI TV, Jaiswal demanded why it had taken three-and-a-half years for the police to question Kesari. Tanwar was murdered on October 28, 1993. Jaiswal had moved the court on behalf of the All India Young Lawyers Association.

The report makes Tanwar out as a man fond of liquor and women. It quotes Kaveri as saying Kesari sent them a jeep with a driver a day after Tanwar told Kesari in September, 1991, that Kaveri found it difficult to commute to the Allahabad Bank branch in Tughlaqabad, where she was posted.

Kaveri is quoted as saying the jeep remained with the Tanwars from September to December, 1991, when it had to be returned so that the AICC could auction it. The jeep was evidently one of those the AICC purchased for the 1991 general elections.