A tale of two deaths: Sonali Phogat case mirrors Swetnisha Rani’s unsolved murder in Bihar

Sonali Phogat’s death in Goa under mysterious circumstances continues to raise uncomfortable questions. Her meteoric rise in the political arena and her social media presence had made her a popular figure. As such, it is but natural, her death has caught popular imagination.

Sonali belonged to a farmer’s family in Haryana’s Hisar district. She had studied up to class XII in her villages’ government school before she was married at a young age of 17. She was a good-looking, smart and quick-witted woman with undaunted courage. The orthodox family restrictions thus could not confine Sonali to remain a housewife.

After her marriage, Sonali moved to her husband’s house at Noida and there she began exploring a career in modelling. She soon became a star on tik tok and that popularity led her to Big Boss, a popular reality show on the television.

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“My sister was a fearless woman, a woman in possession of dauntless courage. My father was a farmer; cultivating land was the main source of livelihood of our family – parents, three daughters and two sons. My father got her married soon after she passed 12th class from the village school. However, she wanted to study further and explore a career for herself. Sonali started doing modelling after she moved to Noida with her husband,” Sonali’s younger brother Vatan Singh Dhaka told The Federal, adding she was a highly ambitious girl since her childhood.

As a tik-tok star and after participating in Big Boss, Sonali’s popularity grew in leaps and bounds and she became a known face for the people of Hisar district.

Getting involved in politics

According to the family, Sonali came in contact with top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in 2011-12. It, they say, was due to her connect with the people and her celebrity-like image and courage. She had once slapped a Haryana government official in full public view. In 2012, Sonali became head of BJP’s scheduled tribe (ST) wing of four states.

“For the next two years, Sonali worked hard for the betterment of scheduled tribes in close cooperation with Draupadi Murmu, currently the President of India, and Sumitra Mahajan,” said Dhaka, adding that Sonali’s political career took a jump from there and she was spotted by Nitin Gadkari, the then BJP’s national president. Gadkari wanted Sonali to contest 2014 assembly election from Fatehabad constituency.

By 2018, Sonali Phogat was a popular political face in Haryana, according to her family and she was the prospective BJP candidate for Lok Sabha from Hisar constituency. “But she did not get the party ticket and Sonali was disappointed,” said Rinku Singh Dhaka, her other younger brother.

In October 2019, the BJP fielded Sonali from Adampur assembly constituency in Hisar district against Kuldeep Bishnoi, son of former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal. This was Sonali’s litmus test, Rinku said, as Bishnoi family had never lost this seat in the history of Haryana assembly elections. Candidates against them in all previous assembly elections had hardly managed to get 5,000 plus votes.

“My sister left no stone unturned to win Adampur seat to come up to party’s expectations. She got nearly 35,000 votes and lost the election to Kuldeep Bishnoi only by a margin of 29,000 votes,” said Rinku. Adamapur seat is lying vacant now and the by-poll is awaited after Bishnoi left the Congress and joined the BJP early this month.

Dhaka said Sonali met Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar 10 days before she left for Goa where she reportedly died of cardiac arrest on August 23. The family has alleged it to be a pre-planned murder and is now awaiting justice from the police and the ruling BJP government.

Five arrests, no conclusion

Almost two weeks have passed since her death and five persons have been arrested so far, including the two who accompanied Sonali to Goa – Sudhir Sangwan, her personal secretary, and his friend Sukhvinder Singh. The police, however, have not yet arrived at any conclusion.

Her brothers said: “We as well as the entire nation wants the Central Bureau of investigation (CBI) to examine the case since we all sense a foul play in her death. We are not satisfied with the police investigation so far. Sudhir Sangwan must be interrogated strictly as we believe he knows the reason for what he laid the trap.”

The Dhaka family met Haryana chief minister Khattar at Chandigarh and demanded a CBI investigation. Khattar later told the media that he has already written to the Goa government to handover the case to the CBI.

On the other hand, Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant has told media repeatedly that he has sent a confidential report relating to Sonali’s death to the Haryana government.

If political analysts are to be believed, Sonali had strengthened herself on ground as well as in top party circles and see parallels in the case of Bihar’s Swetnisha Raani.

“Sonali seems to have been eliminated exactly the way the 1983 unsolved murder mystery of Swetnisha Rani (popularly known as Bobby) of Bihar,” said Ajay Deep Lathar, a veteran political analyst of Haryana.

The murder mystery of Swetnisha

Swetnisha Rani, known as ‘Bobby’, died a mysterious death at the age of 35 early on the morning of May 8, 1983, in Bihar. She was a typist employed at the Bihar legislative assembly. Bobby was the adopted daughter of Rajeshwari Saroj Das, a Congress (I) member and a former acting chairman of the Bihar legislative council.

Bobby was popular in the Bihar assembly corridors of Patna. She was a college drop-out with a history of broken marriages — she had two children from her second husband. She had joined the Bihar Assembly in 1978 as a telephone operator.

She was buried at Pirmuhani cemetery barely four hours after her death. Her death was followed by two controversial death certificates.

Three days later, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) at Patna, Kishore Kunal, read a report in newspaper and smelt a rat. He registered a case of unnatural death and got the highly decomposed body exhumed from cemetery. The viscera was sent quickly for a chemical test and a week later came out a startling report. It said that Bobby was administered Malathion, an organic phosphorus pesticide.

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Murky circumstances

Police inquiries revealed Bobby’s affairs with ministers, MLAs and one highly connected assembly employee. The SSP soon came under pressure to hush up the matter but Kunal was determined to take the case to its end. He wanted to interrogate suspected ministers, MLAs and others in the frame. The Congress government in Bihar and at Centre came under pressure of MLAs and Kunal was transferred. The government handed over the case to CBI which came to no conclusion after its investigation and the mystery of her death remains unsolved.

In Sonali’s case, meanwhile, the Goa and Haryana police are investigating her property and household belongings but the family’s hope for justice is almost lost.