Suhas Palshikar

A crisis of political courage


Suhas Palshikar

Posing as uncle, Kanda went twice to her Dubai flat: Geetika’s brother

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Geetika Sharma often fought with her brother Ankit. Yet the two were really close. They would go shopping, hang out in coffee shops, have breakfast and dinner together, skip family outings for Maggi at home and chat for hours late into the night. They never needed anyone else.

Twelve days after Geetika, a former MDLR air hostess, hanged herself and left behind a suicide note accusing her employer, Gopal Goyal Kanda, of mental harassment, 22-year old Ankit said his life is now "a filmi drama".

Ankit recalls how Geetika, seven months after she joined MDLR in 2006 as an air hostess, applied for a job in Kingfisher because MDLR airline operations had begun declining.

"He forced Geetika not to leave the company and immediately promoted her as Senior Cabin Crew. Geetika told him she didn't want any preferential treatment, so Kanda revised the salaries of her team mates as well. That did surprise me a little then," Ankit told Newsline.

He said the family began to have doubts about Kanda's intentions and the role of Aruna Chadha, the other person named in Geetika's suicide note, after Geetika went to Goa in early 2009 to work at Kanda's casino there. Her passport, camera and laptop were stolen and she lodged an FIR against two of her colleagues.

"Kanda and Chadha put pressure on her to take the case back. There was an elaborate discussion at home. We did not want Geetika to get into trouble. We just asked her to leave the job," Ankit said. Getting an NOC, he said, was a task since Kanda kept asking her not to quit.

After Geetika landed a job with Emirates, she moved to Dubai. She was "extremely happy" there and would often tell

Ankit how well she was performing.

According to Ankit, the harassment started soon after. Kanda allegedly began making phone calls to Geetika's bosses in Dubai. A forged letter with the Gurgaon SHO's stamp followed.

... contd.

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