BJP MP Tarun Vijay to be quizzed in Shehla Masood murder case

NEW DELHI: BJP Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Vijay will be questioned in connection with the death of Right to Information activist Shehla Masood in Bhopal earlier this month.

Soon after Inspector-General of Bhopal Vijay Yadav said a team would be sent to Delhi to question Vijay, he described Masood as a "good friend and a brave RTI activist". Talking to reporters at the BJP office premises here, Vijay, a national spokesperson of the party, said he had spoken to her on the morning of August 16, the day she was shot, about the anti-corruption movement launched by Anna Hazare.

Bhopal Vijay Yadav had said in Bhopal that phone records showed that Masood had spoken to Vijay on August 16. He also added that Vijay was just one of the people who knew her and was being questioned.

Promising to extend all cooperation to the investigating teams, Vijay said "we will fight till the culprits are booked and Shehla gets justice". Through her event management company, Miracles, she had worked for organising events of the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, a think-tank of which Vijay was director, in Srinagar, Kolkata and New Delhi.

The BJP spokesperson said the police was gathering information from all those who knew her as a friend. "I hope that this serious challenge to civil rights movement would not be politicised by anyone," he said.

In Bhopal, state BJP President Prabhat Jha said the MP government has already asked the Centre to initiate a CBI inquiry into Shehla Masood's murder. "I only want that the guilty are not spared and the innocent in the case are not punished," he said.

Shehla Masood was shot in the head in her car in front of her residence in the posh Koh-e-Fiza locality as she was about to go for a rally supporting Anna Hazare's campaign. Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said "the manner in which Shehla Masood was killed is truly terrifying. She was killed in broad daylight in an area where many VIPs live.