Roxy

scandal

Amit Shah

the National

Women

Theinvolving a young architect, who was tailed round-the-clock by the Gujarat police so that a person identified as ‘Sahib’ in the government could keep track of her movements, has turned murkier with information emerging that the woman was treated like a VIP by the state before she fell out with ‘Sahib’.While she was obviously a marked woman in August 2009, with a team of eight cops following her everywhere and relaying the information to the then minister of state for home, who in turn kept the ‘Sahib’ updated, in the years before the surveillance was launched she was treated like a VIP across the state and on at least one occasion her petrol bills were reimbursed and her mobile phone recharges taken care of by government departments.Documents accessed under the Right to Information Act reveal that in 2005, when all was well between her and Sahib, the woman was invited to attend the Gujarat government’s annual Winter Festival in Kutch, even though she had no role to play in its organisation. Item number 81 in the festival’s balance sheet lists payment of Rs 5,153 made to the woman towards mobile recharge and petrol expenses. The payment was made by cheque (6740282) on October 25, 2005. In the festival’s total bill of Rs 2.43 crore, nobody else was paid for mobile recharge.A Gujarat Tourism Department official, who did not wish to be identified, said: “Though the amount she was paid is not big, but it is clear that an exception was made in her case. She was not involved in any project, but merely attended the inauguration.” The festival was inaugurated by Chief Minister Narendra Modi.The District Collector of Kutch then was Pradeep Sharma, the IAS officer who has alleged that he was persecuted by the Gujarat government because he knew of the woman’s proximity to ‘Sahib’. Though Pradeep Sharma was not available for a comment on Wednesday, a source close to him claimed that “there were instructions from top to look after the woman. But after the relationship soured, she was put under 24-hour surveillance for over two months.”Meanwhile, the woman’s father has written toCommission ofclaiming that his daughter does not want any probe into the surveillance mounted on her by the Gujarat government as there was no encroachment on her privacy. “It is an earnest wish of my daughter that no further probe (in snooping issue) is necessary as being politically demanded,” he said.“I, on behalf of my daughter, urge that whatever help was rendered upon my request (to ‘Sahib’) was within her knowledge and in her own interest, safety and security, and there has been no encroachment on her privacy as sought to be made out,” he said in the two-page letter.