Trigger warning: the following article has references to suicide. Please avoid reading if you feel distressed by the subject.
Dinesh Sharma’s bedroom cupboard holds a few memories of his daughter: some toys, a book in which she repeatedly wrote ‘Om Sai Ram’, a pen that had been next to her bed the night she died, and a hairpin. “It was the hairpin she was wearing that night,” says Dinesh, thinking back to August 5, 2012, when his daughter, Geetika Sharma, took her life in their north-west Delhi housing society apartment. She was 23.
“She is alive; she is with me,” says the father, now 65, who spends most of his time at home, and needs at least one family member with him. He and his son fear for their lives and try not to go out too often, though Dinesh does step out to visit the gift packaging unit he consults with, more to take his mind off the despair.
In two notes Geetika had left behind, she held former Haryana Minister and businessman Gopal Goyal Kanda and his employee, Aruna Chadha, responsible for mentally and emotionally harassing her. On July 24, 2023, Delhi’s Rouse Avenue court acquitted Kanda and Chadha. The 189-page court order signed by special judge Vikas Dhull said they “directly or indirectly did not prompt Geetika to end her life”.
“It feels like the system has failed us. It only seems to suit the powerful. We have been intimidated for 11 years, and despite having documented proof and electronic evidence — call detail records of SMSes, phone calls, and emails — we have lost the case to a powerful man,” says Ankit Sharma, 32, Geetika’s brother, grieving from the defeat in the case, another in a long list of losses.
Youth and hope
When she was studying at Delhi University’s Daulat Ram College, Geetika worked at Gurugram-based Murli Dhar Lakh Ram (MDLR) Airlines, a low-cost domestic carrier, where she first met Kanda, then 47, who owned the company. She grew quickly, from a trainee in 2006 to the coordinator of the MDLR Group in 2008, the same year she graduated. She was soon transferred to the MDLR Group of Hotels in Goa, to look after Mint, a casino business owned by Kanda, when the airline shut down the same year.
Nupur Mehta, who had interviewed Geetika for the MDLR job in 2006, says, “She always wanted to be an efficient worker and there was never any complaint against her work ethic. She passed the Directorate General of Civil Aviation exam for cabin crew without a problem.”
Geetika had dreamt of working outside India, says Ankit. “We were always ready to support her emotionally, financially, and mentally.” She went on to work at Emirates airline as a flight attendant, but Kanda was a shadow figure, luring her back to join his businesses, according to the family.
In the recent judgment, the court concluded, “…it can be inferred that…Kanda was attracted to deceased Geetika Sharma and this might be the reason for both the accused to travel to Dubai to request her to rejoin MDLR…” The court document also stated that she had received certain “favours and benefits”, such as a director’s role at MLDR, a luxury car, fees for a master’s in business administration, and foreign visits.
Ankit says his sister never received a car. “The fee for the MBA was actually said to be a scholarship initiated by Chadha. Kanda did not communicate anything about it to Geetu,” says Ankit, who first entered a court when he had freshly graduated from college. The pictures of him and his mother that splashed across newspapers then still haunt him, and he refuses to be photographed by the media. Today, he works in education, but keeps as low a profile as possible.
Outside the Rouse Avenue court gates, as the media jostled for sound bites, Kanda said, “There was no evidence against me; I was framed…” An hour later, he put up a post on social media from the Kalka Devi Temple saying, “I have faith in the temple of justice and in my god.” He also thanked his well-wishers and the people of Sirsa, his Assembly constituency.
On July 18, six days before the verdict, Kanda was on a list of invitees to a meeting in Delhi of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), of which his Haryana Lokhit Party (LHP) is a part. After the verdict, he also met Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal, who is from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
During the 2019 Assembly poll, Kanda’s affidavit to the Election Commission stated that he had nine criminal cases against him. These included abetment to suicide, criminal conspiracy, forgery, cheating, and cheque bouncing.
While he has been acquitted in the abetment to suicide case, the other cases are still being argued in various courts. Kanda is married and has three children.
Loss and loneliness
Over the past decade, the Sharma family has faced many losses. Six months after Geetika’s death, her mother Anuradha Sharma, 51, an officer at a government office in Delhi, also took her life. She was a prime witness in the case.
Ankit recalls, “It was a regular Friday morning. Mom and I had plans to have lunch at my office in Hauz Khas, but she never came. She suddenly changed her mind.” That evening, her body was found in Geetika’s room. She too left behind two notes, again blaming Kanda and Chadha. “My mother was the one keeping our family together. She was at the forefront of our fight for justice,” he says.
Suresh Sharma, a relative, remembers: “Anuradha had lost a lot of weight during the struggle. She wanted the press to keep a distance from their house because she was petrified of flashy TV headlines that cast aspersions on her daughter’s character.”
“Dinesh and Ankit went into a shell,” says another relative, who did not wish to be named. It took the family three years to come to terms with these two deaths, both within a year. Everything in their Ashok Vihar home stood still.
It was only in 2015 that they were able to collect the belongings of the women and give them away to an orphanage that Geetika would celebrate her birthday at every December. “If your family is in trouble, you have to come together and fight,” says Dinesh, adding that they decided to get on with the practical aspects of the trial.
“We tried to get back some balance emotionally, changing the way furniture was laid out, so that everything we saw didn’t remind us of them,” says Ankit, whose eyes dart around when he says words like “police” and “suicide”. His voice is always steady and controlled, a man who has had to face many battles since his early 20s.
At unexpected moments though, the memories come back. “Geetu’s bedsheet wouldn’t have a crease, and she wouldn’t eat on her bed,” says Ankit, laughing for the first time in the conversation. Even today when he eats on his bed, he hears her voice telling him not to spill anything.
She liked her room filled with colour and light: photos, flowers, soft toys, and pillows were everywhere. “Now, there’s just sunlight that peeps through the broken windows,” Ankit says. They haven’t had the heart to repair the panes through which they had first seen her body.
The rise of Kanda
From running a small radio repair shop — Jupiter Music Home — in Sirsa, with a monthly income of a few hundred rupees in the early 1990s, to owning an airline named after his father Murli Dhar in the late 2000s, Kanda quickly climbed up the political ladder to become the Minister of State for Home in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government in Haryana in 2009.
A General Certificate of Education A level certificate holder from Cambridge Assessment International Education, the equivalent of Class XII in India, Kanda opened a shoe shop, graduated to a shoe factory, and tried his hand at several petty businesses, but without much success. He moved to Gurugram from Sirsa in the late 1990s and made a huge fortune from the booming real estate business. In less than a decade, he spread his business empire to hold stakes in hotels, casinos, car dealerships, and export businesses.
He soon warmed up to the late Chief Minister Bansi Lal, whose Haryana Vikas Party was in power in alliance with the BJP in 1996. He shifted loyalty to the Chautalas when their Indian National Lok Dal came to power in 1999.
Hailing from the Chautalas’ political bastion, Sirsa, Kanda, once their close confidant, fell out with them over an alleged denial of ticket for the 2009 Assembly poll. Also denied a ticket by the Congress, Kanda contested as an Independent from Sirsa and won by over 5,000 votes.
With the election results throwing up a fractured mandate, a big political opportunity came his way as the Congress fell a few seats short of the simple majority mark in the 90-member House. Taking up the role of a troubleshooter for the grand old party, Kanda helped Hooda cobble together the numbers and was rewarded with the position of Minister of State for Home in the government.
In mid-2012, when Geetika killed herself and the news of her notes hit the headlines, Kanda was forced to resign. He was eventually arrested and spent 17 months in jail, only to be granted bail in March 2014.
Even as the legal battle lingered on, he launched his own political outfit, the HLP, in 2014, but lost the Sirsa seat in the Assembly election that year, pushing him into political oblivion.
In the 2019 poll, the BJP found itself in a position similar to the one the Congress was in a decade earlier. They fell six short of the majority mark of 46, and Kanda, this time managing to score a narrow win from Sirsa, was quick to offer unconditional support to the party, sensing a political opportunity.
However, senior BJP leader Uma Bharti raked up his past in a series of social media posts, forcing the State unit to turn down his offer of support. Now, this is changing.
Seeking answers
In the intervening years, only immediate relatives came and went from the house of the Sharmas, supporting them silently, but dissuading them from pursuing the case. They feared for the family’s safety, especially since Kanda’s men would visit in the initial years. “They would ask us to settle for money,” says Ankit.
In 2014, Dinesh and Ankit were allegedly attacked by Kanda’s lawyers and supporters inside Delhi’s Rohini courthouse. However, Kanda’s lawyer, R.S. Malik, had at the time said the duo had instigated the ‘argument’.
Neighbours don’t speak to them, and a house help is difficult to find. “There has been a lot of speculation on how Geetu got this job and why she was involved with this powerful person,” says Ankit, adding that her character assassination in both the neighbourhood and the courtroom made them feel diminished. “But the shame was not ours,” says Ankit.
The verdict stated that a doctor, Vishaka Munjal, had testified that Geetika had come to her clinic in March 2012 for an abortion. It said there was also a “strong possibility” that she had been intimate with a person in Mumbai on August 3, 2012. Her post-mortem report corroborated this.
“In court, Kanda would be sitting, where accused people are supposed to stand. We’d remain standing near the judge, while many in the courtroom would greet him with a namaste. Often, Kanda’s lawyers would move an application saying he had to visit London, the U.S., or Nepal with his family, or was on a holiday. He enjoyed the perks, while we waited in line, only for answers and justice,” Ankit says.
According to the police investigation, Geetika’s salary doubled within 16 months of joining MDLR. An unusual clause mentioned in her contract was to report to Kanda directly, every day.
The judgment read, “No specific acts or instigation done by any of the accused has been specifically mentioned in the suicide note.” It went on to say that the manner of cheating or breaking trust was not put down in writing.
An upset Ankit asks rhetorically if his sister should have built a careful narrative even while her mental health was in a shambles.
Now, the family awaits the State’s response in helping them find a prosecutor. “We’re not really fighting for Geetika anymore, we’re fighting for women who are helpless when such powerful people exploit them,” he says.
The flashes of joy are only from the past, when he remembers his father enjoying Bollywood music, taking them out to watch a movie, the four of them eating from roadside thelas. “We don’t go back to these places. Even leaving the house is an effort,” Ankit says.
If you are in distress, please call a suicide helpline (available 24x7): Kiran 1800-599-0019; Aasra 9820466726.
