Monday, June 28, 2010

I am innocent: Model Viveka's boyfriend

Model Viveka Babajee, who was found dead in her  apartment in Bandra, Mumbai on Friday last week. File photo
Model Viveka Babajee's former boyfriend Gautam Vora, who moved the Mumbai Sessions Court for anticipatory bail today, has told NDTV that he is not the reason for the 37-year-old woman's death.

"I am innocent... I am not the reason for her death," Vora said. Mumbai Police have summoned Vora, a stock broker, for questioning in connection with the model's suicide. The police say Vora had been dating the 37-year-old model for a few months.

Viveka hanged herself from a ceiling fan in her flat in the posh Mumbai suburb of Bandra on Friday. A mobile phone, a laptop, a diary and a few letters addressed to Gautam Vora were among the things recovered from her residence. The last entry in a diary recovered by the police reads, "I Kill".

Police sources say the former Miss Mauritius fought with Vora on June 24, just a day before her death. The last two calls from her mobile phone were to a woman friend and to her family in Mauritius and she reportedly told them that she was "going far, far away."

The police are examining Viveka's diary to see if they can find anything to reveal whether she committed suicide of her own accord or was pushed to the edge. Police sources say she had tried to commit suicide at least once before.

But Vora, scion of one of the city's oldest stockbroking families, has denied being romantically involved with her.

In his application to the court, Vora has said he that had met Viveka at a function and that they kept in touch on the social networking website Facebook and had become good friends. He insists that they were only friends and that the model was already depressed when he met her. "I never expected her to commit suicide," he has said.

On what had happened last Thursday, when the police say Viveka and Vora fought, his statement to the court reads, "Met her on 24th June. We had a few drinks and she was smoking a lot...She was suffering from a bad patch in her life due to financial losses and troubled relationships and the death of her father...I asked her not to smoke and drink so much and left around 9 pm."

Viveka killed herself the next day.

The case is a throwback to the suicide of another to model Nafisa Joseph in 2004, the result of love gone awry.

Sources say at this point, the police are unlikely to charge Gautam Vora with abetment to suicide only on the basis of Babajee's diary entries. That's because they say the couple had been dating only for a few months. Also, Viveka had attempted suicide before. Much will now depend on what her family and Vora himself tell the police.

But away from the media glare, the model's friends and family paid her a quiet homage. Her Facebook account has been flooded with messages from friends who described her as caring and insightful. (With PTI inputs)

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