Chandigarh: The fate of Sirsa MLA and Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP) chief Gopal Kanda hangs in balance as a Delhi court on Tuesday pronounced its verdict in the case of abetment of suicide to Geetika Sharma, in which he is the main accused.
A former air hostess of Kanda’s now defunct MLDR Airlines, Sharma was found dead at her residence in Delhi on 5 August 2012. She left a suicide note accusing Gopal Kanda of harassing and ‘misusing’ her with the active assistance of her HR manager Aruna Chadha.
At the time of his arrest in connection with the case in 2012, Kanda was a minister in the then Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government in Haryana. He was also booked for rape, but the charge against him was dropped by the Delhi High Court in 2013.
Six months after Geetika’s death, her mother Anuradha Sharma died by suicide on 16 February 2013, leaving behind a suicide note, accusing Kanda and Chadha of forcing their daughter to take the extreme step.
Kanda’s name in 2023 surfaced again earlier this month when his party, the Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP), was mentioned in a list of 38 parties identified as constituents of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The list was shared by the BJP with the media ahead of the meeting of NDA allies held in New Delhi on July 18. But neither Kanda nor any office bearer of his party was seen taking part in the meeting.
His younger brother Gobind Kanda told ThePrint that his party is part of the NDA but could not attend the meeting as he had some important work to do.
ThePrint reached Gopal Kanda for comment but did not get a call. This report will be updated upon receipt of a response.
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Born in December 1965, Gopal Kanda and his younger brother Gobind started off with small businesses – a radio repair outlet and a shoe shop – in Sirsa, Haryana, before the elder brother decided to move to Gurugram to try his luck in the real estate sector.
In a few years, he wrote the story of rich to rich. Locals in Sirsa knew him as a businessman who made huge fortunes in real estate. He was also seen as close to the Chautala family when the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) was in power in the state.
In his heyday, the Tara Baba Ashram, a private religious place named after the family guru of the Kandas, was a popular address. Kanda used to invite film stars and singers like Hema Malini and Narendra Chanchal to the ashram during his annual functions.
When the INLD was voted out of power in 2005, Kanda began to distance himself from the Chautala family. A few months before the October 2009 assembly elections, he announced that he would contest from Sirsa. He won as an independent by defeating INLD’s Padam Jain and became a junior minister in the cabinet headed by Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
But his fortunes sank after he got caught in the Geetika Sharma case. Following his arrest in connection with the case, he had to resign from the Council of Ministers and was granted bail in September 2013 after spending 13 months in jail.
On 2 May 2014, just before the parliamentary elections, Kanda launched the HLP and was seen trying to align with the BJP, citing his father Murli Dhar Kanda’s links with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He had then claimed that his father had once contested from an assembly seat in Sirsa (in undivided Punjab) on a Jana Sangh ticket.
In the 2014 assembly elections later that year, Kanda lost in Sirsa to INLD’s Makhan Lal Singla by a margin of 2,938 votes.
However, he won the 2019 assembly elections in Sirsa and immediately offered support to the BJP, which won 40 seats in the 90-member assembly, falling six short of the majority mark. His younger brother Gobind Kanda, however, lost in Rania to INLD’s Ram Chand Kamboj, but Congress’s Ranjit Singh Chautala slipped to the third position.
While Kanda’s supporters were hoping that he would be inducted as a minister, former Union minister Uma Bharti criticized him for his alleged involvement in the Geetika Sharma suicide case in a series of tweets. Facing criticism, the BJP rejected his offer of support and forged an alliance with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) to form the government.
The BJP soon realized the importance of the Kanda brothers, and both the BJP and the JJP fielded Gobind Kanda as their joint candidate in the November 2021 Ellenabad assembly by-election. But the younger Kanda brother lost to INLD’s Abhay Singh Chautala.
Despite the electoral setback, the presence of HLP in the list of NDA constituents shows that Kanda is still relevant in Haryana politics.
In June this year, Gopal Kanda and his younger brother were seen making arrangements for Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s rally in Sirsa on June 18. However, Gopal Kanda reportedly left the venue before Shah arrived.
In their 2019 election affidavits, Gopal and Gobind Kanda had declared their net worth as Rs 95 crore and Rs 65 crore, respectively. Gopal Kanda also mentioned that he had nine criminal cases pending against him at that time, two of which accused him of abetment to suicide.
(Edited by Tony Rae)