‘Shouldn’t the rest have at least asked me once what had happened?’
What NGO director Khurshid Anwar wrote to a friend before jumping to death
SIDDHARTHA GUPTA
Less than a month before his apparent suicide after an FIR charging him with rape was registered,Khurshid Anwar,executive director of NGO Institute for Social Democracy,had written to a friend on a social networking website. In his post to Suman Kesri,a friend from JNU,he gave his version of the sequence of events.
On November 21,Kesri had asked Anwar what had happened and,in response,Anwar had sent her a message on Facebook the next day.
This is what he wrote:<\b>
“Everybody consumed alcohol. After consuming alcohol,a girl began to feel unwell. I don’t know when somebody made her lie down in my bedroom. I was sitting in the drawing room with the others. Then came the time to leave. I had called two taxis to ensure that everybody could go back and that nobody stayed back.” He was referring to an impromptu party members of an NGO organised.
According to his post,the woman was left at his house despite his concerns. “One person announced that everybody should leave the place and let the girl rest in my house. The person who made the announcement wasn’t ready to stay over herself. But I thought that since this girl was unwell,she should be looked after by a woman only. I said this to a third girl present there. She said that the person making the announcement wouldn’t want her to do that. Before I could say anything else,everybody started descending from the stairs.”
Anwar claims in his post that the girl began crying after a while. When he checked on her,Anwar claims she made comments,but he returned to the drawing room.
According to Anwar’s letter,the next morning the girl accused him of spiking her drink. “She came into the drawing room and demanded of me what she had last night. I was shocked. I said,‘Stop it’ and asked her to shut up. A girl says those words to me thrice. Why? I kept thinking over this but didn’t think it was a conspiracy at that point.”
Anwar also says he spoke to a member of the NGO about the incident,but nothing happened for a few days. “Then I found out that I was being blamed. The members of the NGO who I knew beforehand stopped talking to me. The friend told me they had met the girl. Even after repeated requests,they refused to meet me. Why? I don’t know. Then after a few days,around 8 to 10 people came over to meet me. I also called over somebody from my side. I found out later that one of the members of the NGO was saying that she will put me in trouble. But these people apologised to me straightaway. One person also said that it was true the girl had accepted in front of her that she had made… comments.”
According to his letter,Anwar could not get in touch with the victim. “I found out later that the girl had disappeared. I asked them where she was and that she be made to talk to me to clear the air. I was told she is unwilling to come. But right in front of me that person received a call from the girl which she went somewhere else to attend. The matter had ended from my side. I had nothing else to say. Because they hadn’t said anything about the video to me. But I recorded the entire conversation on my phone,and the recording is safe. The recording is almost one-and-half hours long and it details a conspiracy by two other members of the NGO. The people there said that those two had vanished,taking the girl along with them,and the others knew nothing about it.”
Anwar then wrote to her on Facebook that he would go to police and the woman replied,saying he was free to do so. “But she did say that I was free to go to the police. I took a screen shot of this and that is also safe with me. Then I started looking for the girl. She was not in her hometown. Nobody knew where she was in Delhi. Only the members of the NGO who I knew beforehand will be able to say where the girl is.”
His letter reads,“Now after all this,those members of the NGO I knew beforehand refuse to acknowledge me. They have deflected the fight somewhere else and are now enjoying the show. What is my fault in this? Shouldn’t the rest have at least asked me once what had happened?”
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