I did not tow away Indira Gandhi's car: Kiran Bedi tells NDTV

The News Minute | January 28, 2015 | 3.14 pm ISTOne of the things that shot the country’s first woman IPS officer into fame, now turns out to be a fable, in which the cast was wrong.The BJP’s Delhi chief ministerial candidate, Kiran Bedi has said that it was not she who had towed away the then prime minister Indira Gandhi’s car which was illegally parked in Delhi, but another officer.At a time when Bedi’s membership of BJP has become the source of much debate, Bedi appears to have volunetarily jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. In an interview with senior journalist and Executive Editor at NDTV Ravish Kumar, Bedi denied towing away Indira Gandhi’s car and said instead, the person who carried out the action was an officer by the name Nirmal Kumar for illegal parking and he was a sub-inspector at the time.She says that she was the DCP Traffic at the time, and had been asked whether she would take action against the officer for towing away the prime minister’s car. She can be heard saying that she would give the officer an award for his actions. The video clip of the interview has become so popular, that it began trending on twitter. In the 20-minute interview, the portion in which Bedi reveals that bit of information comes towards the end, at the 16th minute. Kumar also asks her some other questions on whether she was the first woman IPS officer in the country, or whether it was someone else. He also asks her for her views on whether political parties should come under the RTI act and disclose their sources of funding. Bedi can be seen saying that the BJP’s funding was “transparent”. When she kept repeating this line, Kumar says that given that she had in the past said that political parties must disclose their sources of funding, she should answer the question in terms of yes or no.Later, in a blog post, titled Im not a super-journalist, says Ravish Kumar, the journalist recounted his experience of the meeting with Bedi and said that the whole interview was sort of a blur for him as Bedi kept repeating that she had little time to spare. He said that when she told him that it wasn’t she who had towed Indira Gandhi’s car away, he wondered to himself how it was that the story had circulated. He said: “"You had towed Indira Gandhi's car," I said this while trying to keep pace with her. She stopped when she heard this. "No, I didn't tow her car away," she replied. I thought to myself, so who told us these tales about Kiran Bedi towing Indira Gandhi's car? It has become a sort of urban legend. It has become a part of her image. Kiran Bedi reaffirmed that she never had the Prime Minister's car towed, but that it was Nirmal Singh, who was then the Assistant Commissioner of Police who ordered that. So why didn't Nirmal Singh become a hero? Why doesn't the world praise Nirmal Singh? Why doesn't any political party give a ticket to Nirmal Singh?”Tweet