The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Family claims harassment by CBI drove Bansals to suicide
Day after suicide, B K Bansal and his son cremated in Hisar
A DAY after former director general in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Bal Kishan Bansal, 60, and his son Yogesh, 31, committed suicide in their east Delhi apartment, their last rites were conducted in their hometown, Hisar in Haryana, Wednesday evening. Over 100 members of the Pansari community, to which Bansal belonged, were present at the cremation ground in Gandhi Chowk.
None of his colleagues from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs were present at the funeral.
Pawan Bansal, B K Bansal’s elder brother, accused the CBI of forcing his brother and his family to take the extreme step.
“On July 16 and July 18, while Bal Kishan was in custody, raids were conducted at their Delhi apartment. Only his wife, daughter and son were in the house. As many as 14 officers, including two woman constables, were part of the team that conducted the raid. They harassed and tortured his wife and daughter for hours. The team came at 3.30 pm and left at 5.30 am. What kind of raid takes 14 hours? His wife and daughter ended their lives out of sheer humiliation and the incident left Bal Kishan and Yogesh shattered,” said Pawan Bansal.
He claimed that the day before his brother committed suicide, the bureaucrat had been “threatened” by CBI officials.
“On Monday, September 26, Bal Kishan was summoned by the CBI again and threatened. The officials threatened to kill his son in an encounter. I had spoken to Yogesh that day... he sounded very disturbed. I didn’t know he would end his life that night,” said Pawan.
Earlier in the day, a postmortem was conducted on the bodies of B K Bansal and his son at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital in east Delhi.
A few members of the extended family, who had arrived in the capital the previous night, were present at the hospital. The post-mortem was conducted for over three hours and the bodies were handed over to the family by late afternoon.
“Why were we not informed immediately after their bodies were found? All the evidence must have been cleared from the house... we arrived on the scene only at night. Both Bal Kishan and Yogesh had left behind detailed suicide notes, why has the police not shown it to us,” said one of B K Bansal’s cousins, who did not wish to be named.
The cousin added, “We do not want to talk to anybody in the press right now because we ourselves are in the dark. All I can say is that my brother was under immense pressure. A week ago, he had come to Hisar and told us about the harassment by CBI officials. But he was determined to fight it out. I didn’t know he would succumb to the pressure”.
“The Bansals were a closeknit family. Bal Kishan was the first member from our community to land a government job in the city. The Rs 9 lakh bribe that he was accused of taking was just a loan from an acquaintance. He was being framed. Finally, all the humiliation got to him and he ended his life,” said another relative of B K Bansal’s wife, Satyabala, who was present at the funeral.
B K Bansal’s brother, Pawan, claimed that a Dig-level officer was “behind all the torture” that his brother was allegedly put through. “Bal Kishan had mentioned the DIG to me. He had said that the DIG had instructed the officers who conducted the raid to harass the family. The DIG had threatened Bal Kishan as well... he told Bal Kishan that he would finish his son’s life... arrest him and put him behind bars,” Pawan alleged.