Sonali Phogat Case: Three Accused Sent To Police Custody For Five Days, Restaurant Owner Denied Bail

Sonali Phogat Murder Case: The Goa police produced the three accused before the court in Panaji where they were remanded to five-day police custody.

New Delhi: A Goa court on Sunday remanded three accused in Sonali Phogat's murder case to police custody for five days.

The police produced the three accused - Edwin Nunes, who owns the Curlies restaurant in Goa, and two drug peddlers Dattaprasad Gaonkar and Ramakant Mandrekar - before the court in Panaji. The court sent them in police custody for five days, news agency PTI reported an official as informing.

Nunes had also moved an application for bail, but the court rejected it, the official added.

This comes after Anjuna Police arrested a second drug peddler identified as Rama Mandrekar earlier in the day.

Goa Police on Saturday informed that the BJP leader was given methamphetamine, a recreational drug, by her aides hours before her death. Earlier, two more persons were arrested in the case related to her alleged murder.

On Saturday, Dattaprasad Gaonkar was arrested for allegedly providing drugs to Phogat's aides Sudhir Sagwan and Sukhwinder Singh who fed them to her, police said, as reported by news agency PTI.

Edwin Nunes, the other arrested man, is the owner of the Curlies restaurant in the North Goa district where Sonali Phogat and her aides had partied on the intervening night of August 22 and 23.

Phogat was administered methamphetamine, a kind of recreational drug, and some left-over drug was recovered from the restaurant's washroom, said Deputy Superintendent of Police Jivba Dalvi, as per PTI.

Sagwan and Sukhwinder Singh, arrested earlier, allegedly told the police that they had procured drugs from Gaonkar who worked as a room boy at Hotel Grand Leoney Resort in Anjuna where they were staying.

Gaonkar and Nunes were booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

Videos Of CCTV Footage Show Last Hours Of Sonali Phogat

Videos of CCTV footage from the restaurant has also surfaced on social media. In one video, Sonali Phogat can be seen dancing with Sagwan who then forces her to drink water which she instantly spits out.

Another video shows the BJP leader being escorted out of the restaurant by the accused. She could be seen staggering and nearly falling near the staircase on her way out.

Phogat, a former TikTok star and contestant on the reality show Big Boss, died on August 23, a day after arrival in Goa.

On Friday, police had said that Sagwan and Singh allegedly mixed some "obnoxious substance" in water and forced Phogat to drink it.

Phogat was brought dead to St Anthony Hospital at Anjuna in North Goa district on August 23 morning from the hotel where she was staying.

Initially, the doctors said she had had a heart attack, but her brother alleged that Sagwan and Singh, who had arrived in Goa with her, had played a role in her death.

The duo was detained and a First Information Report for murder was registered after the autopsy report said that there were multiple "blunt force injuries" on her body though it reserved opinion on the cause of death pending chemical analysis.

Police had said the "economic interest" could be a motive behind her killing. A local court on Saturday remanded Sagwan and Singh in police custody for ten days.

(With Agency Inputs)