Nand Lal, father of Deepika alias Payal, was in tears as he narrated the harrowing story of how Mohinder Singh Pandher and his servant Satish lured his teenage daughter to his house in Nithari on May 7, 2006, on the pretext of finding a job for her brother, and how the girl disappeared from the scene thereafter.
"It was at the court's intervention that the Noida police registered a first information report. I have been chased and hounded by the police who was supposed to help me in finding my daughter. They called me a blackmailer and said that on the pretext of getting money from Mohinder Singh, I was dramatising the disappearance of Payal. They called her a woman of loose character who had fled to Mumbai and got married. And that I was harassing a decent man," Nand Lal, a middle-aged man from Uttaranchal, told newsmen at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Nand Lal narrated the sequence of events from the day (May 6) when Payal got a call from Satish for a job for her brother.
"When she did not turn up till 6 pm on May 7, I started calling Mohinder Singh's mobile number and it was constantly engaged. I tried till 11 pm and when I got him on the line the next day, Mohinder Singh told me that he was in Chandigarh and was not aware of the developments. He said what his servant had done was not known to him, and he asked me to call him in the evening. I tried again in the evening, but he had switched off his personal mobile number. It was only after the chief judicial magistrate ordered registering of the FIR that the police swung into action. I had even met SSP Rathore and he detailed a certain officer who soon proceeded on leave," Nand Lal said.
Pandher then moved the high court claiming that Nand Lal was trying to extort money, but even the high court rejected his plea. Nand Lal wants to know why the police was after him when he was the victim.
"They have maligned the name of my daughter and now they are harassing me," he said.
Nand Lal has pawned his village house for finances to get justice for his daughter.
More from rediff