Doctor's murder -- The case all sleuths wanted to run from

Doctor's murder -- The case all sleuths wanted to run from
BHAVNA VIJ

NEW DELHI, FEB 21: Seven years after the gruesome murder of Dr Surendra Tanwar, the investigating agencies are no wiser and want the case to be closed as unsolved.

All angles including love, sex, enmity and politics have been probed without any success. The investigating agencies have even failed to determine the motive behind the murder and say that they cannot do any more.

Officials of the CBI, which filed a closure report in the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) R.K. Gauba, were on February 14 not only denied permission to give up investigations but were also pulled up for their laxity. The CBI's claim that they had done their best and explored all possible angles did not cut any ice with the court. The CMM asked the CBI to explain certain crucial things and file their reply by February 28.

In the closure report, the CBI stated that the family members of the deceased did not express any suspicion against anybody and no worthwhile information was received from any quarter even afterannouncing a cash reward of Rs 5 lakh for a ``breakthrough.''

First it was the New Delhi district police, then the Crime Branch and now the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which wanted to wash its hands of the case. Dr Tanwar's wife Kaveri had reportedly given her approval for closure of the case.

The closure report stated that Dr Tanwar's wife and his close friends Vijay Mehra, Ratnakar Mudgal and Neeraj Mudgal had been subjected to a lie-detector test. Some politicians including Congress leader Sitaram Kesri and former BJP MP Swami Sureshanand and many other friends and acquaintances, a number of them women, were also closely questioned by the investigating agencies.

Dr Tanwar was said to be close to former Congress president Kesri and used to visit him regularly. Tanwar had visited Kesri's house on October 26, 1993. ``As per Kaveri Tanwar's statement, the doctor received a call from Kesri around 9pm that night and went to his house. When he returned after 30 minutes he looked worried andpreoccupied,'' a CBI officer said, quoting the interrogation report. Kesri had also provided an AICC jeep to the doctor for six months in 1991.

The report filed by Crime Branch also mentioned Dr Tanwar's close relations with the wife of a MP living in Meena Bagh. ``The wife used to visit the doctor often in his Pandara Road dispensary and the doctor too went to her house regularly for medical check-ups,'' the report said.

In fact, the manner in which the case had been followed by the investigating agencies reflected the politics of the day, for example, Kesri's equation with the government of the day. So while initially, the Crime Branch fought shy of interrogating Kesri, it was again due to political pressure that his role was closely examined.

Congress MP Rajesh Pilot, Kesri's opponent in the party, had also written to then Prime Minister Deve Gowda to look into the case in December 1996. He had reportedly also provided some crucial information in the letter. Gowda did not waste much time doing that.But in the entire rigmarole of pleasing political bosses, the investigations were bound to suffer.

The CBI does not even possess a copy of Pilot's letter. The court, on the last hearing on February 14, pulled up investigating officer DSP R.S. Dhankar for not seizing the crucial letter. The CMM also sought ``justification'' from the IO for not seizing the log book of AICC vehicles.

The CMM also censured the CBI when the IO said he could not trace the details of the phone calls from or to the residence of the deceased as they had been destroyed.

The body of Dr Tanwar working with the Central Government Health Services (CHGS) had been dismembered. The limbs cut with ``surgical precision'' were found packed separately.

His wife Kaveri had lodged a missing report on October 29, 1993, at Tilak Marg police station, when Tanwar failed to return home. It was the next day, early morning, when a black canvas bag was found outside the Laxmibai Nagar flat of a nurse, who worked with Dr Tanwar.

The bag had fivepolythene bags, respectively containing blood-stained clothes, left arm, right arm, head and the left leg. There were also two white gloves, an Odonil container and three towels in the bag. The parts were sent to Safdarjang hospital for post-mortem and the head and clothes were identified by relatives of Dr Tanwar.

It was on November 8, 1993, that pieces of his right leg were recovered near Shiv Mandir in Laxmibai Nagar, in two polythene bags. His torso has not been found till date.