Kanda in custody, cops to confront him with Aruna

Former Haryana minister Gopal Goyal Kanda, accused of abetting the suicide of 23-year-old airhostess Geetika Sharma, was remanded in police custody for seven days, though the prosecution sought 14 days as "his sustained custodial interrogation is required to gather evidence in the case".

The court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate D K Jangala, however, allowed police to keep him in their custody for seven days.

The court also issued production warrant for Aruna Chadha for August 20 after the police said they have to confront her with Kanda.

Chadha, a senior functionary with the now-defunct MDLR Airlines, has already been arrested. In her suicide note, Geetika had alleged that Kanda and Chadha were harassing her to rejoin the former minister's firm after she left the job. Kanda and Chaddha have denied the allegations.

Kanda surrendered at Ashok Vihar police station on Saturday morning after being on the run for the past 10 days. He was produced in a courtroom packed to capacity. Many of his supporters were stopped from entering the court with police personnel bolting the door from inside.

Special prosecutor Rajiv Mohan said Kanda's custody was required to recover various documents and missing hard drives from the MDLR Group's office in Gurgaon. He said police also needed to confront him with documents that they have recovered till now.

The prosecutor said there were several SMSes sent from several numbers on Geetika's phone and they have obtained the call detail records and Kanda should be confronted with them.

"On one hand, they want judicial relief from the court, and on the other, they are making evidence disappear," he said, arguing that custody was necessary to recover the hard disks and other evidence such as the IP address of the computer from which an email was sent to Emirates Airlines office, accusing Geetika of having committed fraud to obtain her job as airhostess in MDLR.

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