NRI protests death of father in 2003
After Washington DC resident Jyoti Ghag (49) on Monday undertook an agitation in Mantralaya against a clutch of ministers and former top police officers of the city, local Marine Drive police took her to the police station to try and calm her down. But on Tuesday, the NRI woman was at it again, this time from the confines of the police station. A senior officer from Marine Drive police station said, “We neither detained nor arrested her. She is sitting here of her own accord and I have, personally told her to go away but she refused to do so.”
Ms Ghag is protesting the death of her father, Atmaram Ghag, in 2003, alleging that top police officers at the time including Rakesh Maria and D. Shivanandan slapped a fake case of dowry against her father who was also an ex-policeman. According to Ms Ghag, she had objected to the dowry case being slapped against her father in Washington, however the Mumbai police framed her by telling United States police that she could commit suicide, which is a crime.
Ms Ghag has been demanding an investigation into her father’s death since 2009, claiming that he died because his relatives kept him under house arrest for 17 months over a property dispute and did not allow him to move out. She said the police did not investigate her complaints. In July 2009, Ms Ghag sent an email to an official of the ministry of external affairs (MEA) in the US, requesting assistance in probing her father’s death. On August 19, 2009, she sent another mail informing him about a peaceful protest on Gandhi Jayanti.
Ms Ghag told The Asian Age that apart from the investigation of her father’s death, she had a few other demands and met chief minister Devendra Fadnavis several times for them but in vain. Her other demands include dragging Pakistan to the international court for killing Captain Saurav Kaliya and why Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Col. Purohit continue to face charges despite there being no evidence against them even as actors like Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan are freed. She told this newspaper that she had met the chief minister many a times but nothing happened which is why she decided to carry out an agitation.