M A I N   N E W S

Pravin questions Pramod’s character, family denies charges

Mumbai, April 12
Three years after his murder, Pramod Mahajan was today a subject matter of a big controversy with his killer-brother Pravin making serious allegations about his character, which Pramod’s family dismissed as a “complete lie” and a “character assassination arising out of a political conspiracy”.

Forty eight-year-old Pravin, who is undergoing life imprisonment for murdering Pramod in his house here, is believed to have written a book, “My Album”, purported excepts of which were published in a leading Marathi daily today in which he alleged that Pramod had extramarital affair and his wife Rekha had even thought of a divorce.

While stating that it was only Pramod who supported the Mahajan family after the death of their father in 1971, Pravin said, “Pramod was both a hero and a villain.” He said it was because of his abilities that Sharad Pawar did not want Pramod from missing out on a Rajya Sabha nomination a decade back.

“There were six Rajya Sabha seats and seven nominations. At the time, Pramod was political advisor to the Prime Minister, which was an office of profit. He had not quit the post when he filed his papers. Pawar phoned him and pointed out the same. Pramod then submitted a backdated resignation,” he said.

“Pramod told me that Pawar advised him because he did not want rival Suresh Kalmadi to get elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha,” Pravin said.

Speaking on behalf of Pramod’s family, the youngest of the three brothers, Prakash said whatever is written in the book is “all character assassination of a dead man and to portray him in bad light”.

“This is a political conspiracy to defame Pramod by a man who lived off Pramod all his life and now wants to live off him even after his death by writing a book on him,” he said. Maintaining that he was speaking on behalf of Pramod’s wife Rekha and children, Poonam and Rahul, Prakash told reporters in their house that they would consult lawyers on filing a defamation petition but added, in the same breath, whether it was necessary because “the entire content of book was based on untruth”.

The late BJP leader’s brother-in-law Gopinath Munde claimed that “what has appeared is not certified by the jail authorities. I don’t know how it got out of the jail”.

He said, “I am a witness in the case and can’t speak further on the matter”.

In Nagpur, Pravin’s wife Sarangi said, “What is contained in the book is all based on total truth but nobody should make political capital out of it. What is contained in the book was not intended to hurt or vilify anybody”.

Prakash picked up certain portions of the book in which Pravin recollects what had happened when he was nine-year-old and what the family went through after the death of their father, who was a school teacher, to say these were all wrong. Replying to questions, Prakash said Pravin was a “good for nothing character who did nothing to earn a living and even his children used to complaint to others in the extended family about the need to make him do something for a living”.

To a question about Pravin’s reference to Pramod’s alleged extramarital liaison, he said, Pramod belonged to the RSS and the Sangh Parivar family that would not have tolerated such a person if the allegations were true. Prakash said Pramod was a “father figure” for the entire family after the death of their father and was a “good man” all his life but he found out he was a “diamond” after his death when the whole political spectrum paid respects to him. He said, Pravin always indulged in “emotional blackmail” and probably wanted to sow seeds of hatred in their sister by alleging that Munde’s house was used for wrong purposes. — PTI