Date:05/06/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/06/05/stories/2006060516811300.htm

National

No cover-up : Sudhanshu Mittal

NEW DELHI: Businessman Sudhanshu Mittal, a close confidant of the slain BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, said on Monday that Pramod's secretary Harish Sharma had asked the servants to rush Rahul Mahajan and Bibek Moitra to Apollo Hospital in the early hours of Friday.

"When the servants rang up Harish and asked him to call a doctor, he advised them to rush Rahul and Bibek to Apollo Hospital ... This was done as we had a confidence level regarding the treatment there,'' he told Aaj Tak channel.

To questions why they were not taken to AIIMS which was close by, Mr. Mittal said ``no one would like to take anybody to a government hospital during an emergency... where treatment would take at least half an hour to begin.''

Asked whether there was any effort for cover-up, Mr. Mittal said: "If we had to do this, then we would not have given the plastic packets to doctors who, in turn, handed them over to police''.

Asked what the doctors said about the packets, he said they did not tell them what they contained and wanted to send them for chemical analysis.

The police later sent them to the Central Forensic Laboratory for tests, he added. — PTI