IANS/Chandigarh
A Haryana minister is in the dock along with two Congress leaders for his objectionable comments against flight attendant Geetika Sharma, who committed suicide in August this year in New Delhi and blamed former state minister Gopal Kanda and another woman as responsible for it.
Labour and Employment Minister Shiv Charan Sharma has landed himself in the middle of a new controversy after he not only attended the birthday celebrations of Kanda, who is at present in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, in Haryana’s Sirsa town but also termed Geetika as a “mere servant” of the former minister.
“This (case against Kanda) is not a big one. He (Kanda) appointed her (Geetika) as a servant by mistake,” Sharma, who is also the Minister of Information and Public Relations, told the gathering at Kanda’s birthday celebrations.The birthday celebrations were organised on Saturday (Dec 29) in Sirsa town, 300km from here, by Kanda’s younger brother, Govind Kanda.
Kanda, who is a sitting legislator, was arrested by the Delhi Police in August this year after his name figured in the suicide note of Geetika, who worked in Kanda’s now defunct MDLR Airlines.
In her suicide note, she named Kanda and another MDLR official, Aruna Chadha, for her suicide.
Kanda was forced to resign as Haryana’s Minister of State for Home Affairs after the controversy broke out. Sharma’s comments were not the only ones on the occasion.
Haryana’s chief parliamentary secretary (CPS) and legislator Parhlad Singh Gillankhera, who also attended the birthday bash told the gathering that Kanda’s birthday was also being celebrated in the Delhi jail.
“He will soon be amongst us,” he said. Another former minister, O P Jain, who was forced to resign from the Hooda government after his name figured in the murder conspiracy of a village headman in 2011, also attended the event in Sirsa.
There was no immediate reaction from Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.