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Mohan Delkar has blamed several people, including a politician, for his suicide, in a note, police said. Mohan Delkar, a 58-year-old Member of Parliament from the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (DNH) was found dead in a room at Hotel Sea Green South in Marine Drive on Monday.
Police said his body was found hanging from the ceiling fan at around 2 pm and a note running over four pages, written in Gujarati, was recovered from his room.
In the note, Delkar has blamed a number of persons, including a senior politician, for his act of taking his own life.
Delkar, a former Congress MP and currently an independent MP from DNH, was in Mumbai to make arrangements for a delegation of JD(U) coming from Bihar to Mumbai and then to Silvassa, sources said.
Sources close to the family said he usually stayed in his own flat while in Mumbai. “This is the first time he booked a hotel room for himself,” the source said.
Police officials outside the Marine Drive hotel in Southern Mumbai.
Marine Drive police, who has registered an accidental death report, said the MP checked into the hotel at night on Sunday. According to police, the last time Delkar visited Hotel Sea Green South was 10 years ago.
On Monday morning, when his driver went to the room, Delkar did not respond to the door bell, an officer said on condition of anonymity. “The driver then called his family members in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and asked whether they had spoken to him.”
The family then called Delkar on his phone but he did not answer. The driver then asked the hotel staff to open the door.
“Since they could not break open the door, the driver accessed Delkar’s room from the balcony of the adjoining room and found him hanging,” said the officer.
The manager of the hotel then informed Marine Drive police about the incident. Police said Delkar was rushed to JJ Hospital, where he was declared dead before admission. A postmortem was conducted later.
Police said they were taking statements from Delkar’s bodyguard and driver. A team from Kalina Forensic Laboratory visited the spot to collect samples. Senior police officers were also present at the spot.
Police said they would submit a copy of their investigation report to the Parliament as he is an MP.
On July 5, last year, Delkar who is a tribal, had posted a video on his Twitter handle where he threatened to resign as Lok Sabha MP in the session that was coming up. In the 24-minute video, he claimed that while he got all the support from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the local administration of the Union Territory was “hounding him”.
He was heard saying, “I will meet the country’s prime minister, the home minister and the Lok Sabha Speaker before I resign because I respect them and they have been supportive… then I will announce that I am resigning as it is my duty to make public why I was forced to resign, why I was helpless.”
Calling the administration of the Union Territory “sarmukhtyarshahi” (authoritarian), Delkar said in the video, “The people responsible for the state of affairs in this region (UT) be it administrative or police… whatever they have done, I have all their files, I have all the evidence… I have lodged complaints (against them) and have all the documents… all those who are responsible and are compelling me to resign, I will name all those people, all officers… in the Lok Sabha. Let the people of the country know why a seven-term MP is resigning.”
He is also heard saying how the administration came down with “200 policemen” to break down the SSR College that he runs, part of which he had given away to establish the Namo Medical Education and Research Institute.
“The Silvassa RDC, SDPO came to break down the college, despite of a stay order of the court. This SSR College has given half its property —11 acres to run the Namo Medical College, free of cost because we thought the prime minister has given a gift of a medical college to this region, for a brighter future of its students… the home minister inaugurates the college… there is no respect for the prime minister or the home minister and the place is attacked as it if were a terror camp,” the MP is heard saying.
Delkar is survived by his wife Kalaben Delkar, son Abhinav and daughter Binita.