The Thane rural police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) against a top Tata Steel official for allegedly abetting the suicide of the company’s former Corporate Communications head and erstwhile journalist Charudatta Deshpande, who was found hanging at his Vasai residence on June 28, this year.
Acting on a complaint lodged with the Vasai police station by former Forbes India Editor Indrajit Gupta, the Thane rural police on Monday night booked Prabhat Sharma, head of Corporate Affairs of Tata Steel, Jamshedpur under Section 306 (Abetment of suicide) of the IPC.
Asked if the police were planning to either question of arrest Sharma on the basis of investigations carried out by a joint team of the Thane rural police and Mumbai branch police, Thane district rural police (Vasai division) Prashant Deshpande told The Pioneer on Tuesday evening: “Our investigations are on. I cannot disclose anything at this stage. All I can say that we have registered an FIR (against the person named in the complaint) in the case”.
A journalist-turned-corporate communication professional, 57-year-old Charu — as Charudatta Deshpande was known in media circles — had committed suicide, by hanging himself at his Vasai residence in Thane district on June 28. He had quit his job as the head of Corporate Affairs and Communications at Tata Steel a month earlier.
Charu’s suicide had come less than three months after the publication of a cover story “Remoulding Tata Steel” on the challenges before the company, in Forbes India, which dealt with the succession drama that had unfolded with the country’s leading industrial group. Several of the senior journalists close to Charu, including complainant Indrajit Gupta, had in a joint representation made to the Tata group management had quoted Charu as having alleged that the officials at Tata Steel were placing the blame on him for “facilitating” a story they thought inimical to their interests.
Following the Charu’s suicide that created a buzz in the media circles, Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil had ordered investigations into the controversial death.