Nagpur: Just how did 7-year-old Yogita Thakre die? That's the question no one is clearly able to answer four days after her body was found in the backseat of BJP president Nitin Gadkari's car.
Yogita's sister Khira Thakre questions the circumstances in which her sister Yogita died. "How is it that no one saw her in the car for 2 hours?" she asks.
On Tuesday evening their mother Vimala, a domestic worker, left Yogita in the care of two policemen posted at state BJP president Nitin Gadkari's home while she went to work. This was something she regularly did. Gadkari was not in town that day.
"When I returned at 5:30pm I asked them where was. She was not there. I called out for her," she says.
Three hours later, Yogita was found dead inside Gadkari's car. Her body was on the back seat. After a doctor had declared Yogita dead. Vimala says she was simply told to take the body away. The police was not informed.
Later that night, the Thakres went to the police, who registered a case of accidental death.
"Her clothes were wet. There were injuries on her face and on her legs. Her neck was twisted to one side and she looked like she had been smothered," Vimala says.
Their belief is backed by the post mortem report that does not rule out murder. It shows injuries all over Yogita's body, including her private parts.
But the police insist they could have been sustained while she was trying to get out of the car. Investigating Officer Inspector R M Katole says: "She may have injured herself while trying to get out."
It is hard to believe that for three hours a seven-year-old child trapped inside that car was crying for help and no one heard her. That too in a building full of policemen and labourers.
How Yogita died, whether or not she was sexually assaulted, is uncertain. What is certain is that it raises questions on whether the Nagpur police has been negligent from the very outset.