Sharma’s sisters’ hide as police guard their house

“No, please go away. We are not talking to anyone. It does not matter where you are from,” says a turbaned youth, positioned strategically behind the gate. The firm voice is laced with anger and there is something menacing about the way he stands guarding his house and family. An older man curiously peers out of the front door but steps out gingerly only after ascertaining that the inquisitive reporter has left. The two men of the house, stand there talking to each other and leave only after they assure themselves that the uninvited guests have left.

The sisters came under spotlight after the murder of Romesh Sharma’s girlfriend’ Kunzom Budhraj. Kunzom was stabbed at Sharma’s farmhouse in Chattarpur by four youths, who were accompanied by his nephew Surinder Mishra, on March 20. According to the caretaker Ram Achal Tewari, who witnessed the stabbing, the two girls were outside the farmhouse and helped the assailants get away. After her death, Kunzom’s mother had also alleged that her daughter had been threatened by Dolly on several occasions, who perceived Kunzom as a threat to her relation with Sharma.

In her late twenties, Tejinder or Dolly, as she was fondly called, is older to Sonu by around five-six years. She was reportedly appointed an office-bearer for the women’s wing of the All India Bharatiya Congress, a political outfit that Sharma had floated last year. She had also helped him in organising a rally at Jantar Mantar in September last year.

The two sisters, both of whom were considered friends’ of Sharma, had also approached the police for permission to visit Sharma in Hauz Khas police station on the occasion of Bhai Dooj. However, when senior police officials said that they would have to ascertain their antecedents, as they had described themselves as his sisters’, they went away. They had later also moved an application in the court of Metropolitan Magistrate J P Narain, seeking permission to meet Sharma in Tihar Jail. When asked by the court, they had said that they were his sisters.

They visited him frequently at Tihar and according to jail officials, they were among the numerous women who came to see Sharma and fought with each other to see him alone.

They were also regulars at his court hearings and were also given the power of attorney by Sharma, in an application seeking the release of his fleet of imported cars.

But while the family might have shut themselves away from the outside world, the neighbours in that upcoming colony in East Delhi are talking. Very reluctantly, one neighbour says: “They are very decent people. In fact, we did not realise till today and that too only after we saw the policemen that it was our Dolly and Sonu, who were being mentioned in the papers.”

According to him, the family has been living in this area for more than a decade. “They have been here for the last 12-13 years. Mr Virdi has a factory and they are quite well off. He has three-four brothers and all of them are settled in Surajmal Vihar. He has one son and two daughters and they are like anyone of us. And before today, we always thought of them as just one of us,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.