Panaji: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sonali Phogat’s drink was drunk by two of her associates during a party. This probably led to Phogat’s death. Both of them are accused of the Phogat ‘murder’. Goa Police gave this information on Friday. A senior police official said that the reason behind the murder of Phogat could be “economic interest”.
He said that both the accused – Sudhir Sangwan and Sukhwinder Singh – have been arrested so that they cannot tamper with evidence and influence witnesses. Inspector General of Police Omvir Singh Bishnoi said that both the accused were seen adding “some chemical substance” to the beverage, which was served to Phogat at a party held at Anjuna’s restaurant. Sangwan and Singh had accompanied Phogat to Goa on 22 August.
Bishnoi said that the accused had admitted to deliberately administering drugs to Phogat at Anjuna’s restaurant in North Goa during police interrogation. The incident happened on the intervening night of 22-23 August. He said that the Anjuna police have arrested both the accused who were taken into custody.
The CCTV footage revealed that the alleged accused Sudhir Sangwan and his accomplice Sukhwinder Singh were partying with the deceased in a club and a video showed that an alleged accused was forcibly giving the victim something.
The police officer said that the investigating officer checked the CCTV footage of the restaurant, which found that Sangwan allegedly forcibly made Phogat drink the drink. He said that on August 23, around 4:30 am, both the accused took Phogat to the washroom, where the three men had stayed inside for two hours.
Bishnoi said it would be known only after custodial interrogation what happened during those two hours. He said that during the party, the accused were accompanied by two women and they were seen cutting the cake. The Inspector General of Police said that both the women are also being questioned.
To a question on whether Phogat’s body had “multiple marks of injury” in the post-mortem report, Bishnoi said the accused had said during interrogation that it could be due to the scratches Phogat suffered while being taken to the hospital. He said that no injury marks were visible on Phogat’s body when he was taken to the hospital, so doctors had suspected that the cause of death could be a heart attack. Bishnoi said that it appears that Phogat died due to drugs.
Bishnoi said the police would also record statements of taxi drivers, one of whom had brought Phogat from the restaurant to the hotel and the other took Phogat to the hospital. After the post-mortem of Phogat’s body was conducted by forensic experts at Goa Medical College and Hospital on Thursday morning, Anjuna police linked the charge of murder to the case of “unnatural death” and said that the report showed her body as “deeply injured”. There are said to be many marks.
Phogat, a BJP leader from Haryana’s Hisar district, who rose to fame with the Tiktok app, came to Goa with Sangwan and Singh on August 22 and stayed at a hotel in Anjuna. He was taken to St Anthony’s Hospital in the morning on 23 August after complaining of ill health, but he died before reaching there. Doctors had then expressed the possibility of his death due to a heart attack.
