Met accused but he wasn’t my PA: BJP Arunachal chief

BJP'S ARUNACHAL Pradesh state president and former MP Tapir Gao remembers the accused, Sanjay Kumar Tiwari, approaching him “twice or thrice” in 2014 at the BJP office in Delhi. According to Gao, Tiwari posed as a journalist and requested Gao to convince the then Nagaland CM to release funds under “some scheme”. At the time, Gao occupied room number 37 the BJP headquarters in the capital.

According to police, Tiwari worked as a PA to an MP from Arunachal Pradesh before he took to cheating and extortion. During interrogation, police sources said, Tiwari claimed he worked as PA to Gao.

But speaking to The Indian Express, Gao said, “Tiwari did not work for me — neither when I was an MP nor after that. But I recall him approaching me to convince the then Nagaland CM to sanction a scheme twice or thrice. He wanted to lure me in his corrupt business but I turned him away. The claim that he was my PA is false.”

According to police, Tiwari also claimed he has worked with journalist Tarun Tejpal in the past. Tejpal, when contacted, refuted the claim.

Police said Tiwari often posed as a PA or a politician, and recruited people to work from him using the website OLX.

According to police, Tiwari had raised his voice against cheating during an examination when he was in Class X. But he was reprimanded and rusticated, police said. He then left studies and eventually landed in Delhi in 1999, when he started working as a “poem reciter” at All India Radio’s Yuva Vani.

Police said that Tiwari, who is married and has two children, worked in various newspapers and news channels. He was also part of various sting operations against political leaders in Uttar Pradesh, police said.

He once conducted a sting operation against LPG cylinder contractors and tried to extort money from them, police said, adding that he was booked for extortion.