`Drop FIR or face consequences, his father told my girl’

The judgement shattered her all over again. “She almost lost her voice when the news was broken to her,” said her son Hemant.

Breaking her silence in an exclusive conversation with The Indian Express, she said that the CBI and the court had not taken cognizance of her statement that the father of the accused, a senior IPS officer, had threatened her daughter with dire consequences.

The interview, conducted over long-distance telephone and over e-mail,Rageshwari Mattoo, who is at present in Toronto, said she had made a written statement to the CBI in which she had listed the threats received by her daughter from the accused Santosh Kumar Singh and his father J.P. Singh.

“My poor girl had received a call a couple of months before the incident from the father of the accused. He had asked her to withdraw the FIR registered against his son. When she said that she has to talk to her parents, he threatened her that she would be responsible for any consequences and banged the telephone,” she said. The CBI, she said, did not produce her statement in the court. “His father provided him a protective umbrella,” she said. J.P. Singh was not available for comment.

He used to even call up police stations from Srinagar, where he was posted, when the accused was called by the police following complaints by her daughter, she said.

She said on August 16, 1995, the accused had forcibly tried to enter their house. He incessantly banged on the door and Priyadarsihnicalled up the flying squad and her parents on the telephone. Before he could force his entry into the house, the flying squad reached the spot and took him into custody. Two ACPs, Prabhati Lal, who was the ACP Rashtrapati Bahawan (now North district) and Satinder Nath, now ACP anti-corruption, also came to the police station and started shielding the accused, she said. “Because of them and the influence of his father, the accused always received VIP treatment at the police stations,” she added.

She said the accused had been harassing her for more than a year. He would often telephone her. “So much so that my daughter dreaded picking up the telephone out of the fear that he would again pester her,” she said. Even on the morning of the crime, he called her up and she had banged the telephone, she said. “This showed his desperation.” She also expressed her apprehension over the role of the Personal Security Officers (PSOs) provided to her daughter. The previous two were removed because they had gotfriendly with the accused and were seen taking tea with him in the campus. Both of them was removed after the Mattoos had complained to then DCP U.N.B. Rao.

Even the third PSO, she said, was seen chatting with the accused in the campus. He did not turn up on the day of the crime although he was supposed to arrive at their house at 9 in the morning, she said. “Once, I was admitted in the AIIMS and my daughter was with me when the accused called up. How did he know the number of my room?” she asked and added that apparently the PSO had passed on the telephone number to him.

The family is yet to receive a copy of the judgement. Mattoo, however, has been reading newspaper reports quoting extensively from the judgment on the Internet.

Rageshwari Mattoo’s 10 questions to CBI

Rageshwari Mattoo, Priyadarshini’s mother, asks India’s premier investigative agency: