Shiv Sena MP Vinayak Raut on Wednesday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to suspend and prosecute top administrative officers in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, alleging the suicide note of Lok Sabha member Mohan Delkar had accused them of harassment.

One of those purportedly accused in the note is Praful Khoda Patel, administrator of the Union Territory and former BJP minister from Gujarat who is believed to be close to Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah.

Raut said that while Mumbai police were investigating the suicide, the Centre couldn’t ignore its responsibility to act since Delkar was a senior MP and had first complained about his troubles to the Lok Sabha Speaker.

Raut’s request to Modi comes at a time Delkar’s suicide is emerging as another flashpoint between the BJP-led central government and Maharashtra’s Sena-Congress-NCP administration, which has been underlining that as a Union Territory, Dadra and Nagar Haveli came directly under the Centre’s control.

Delkar, an Independent MP from Dadra and Nagar Haveli serving his seventh term, was found hanging in a Mumbai hotel last month.

Media reports say he left behind a 15-page suicide note in Gujarati alleging systematic harassment by Patel, collector Sandeep Kumar Singh and five other officials.

Delkar’s son Abhinav has said his father wrote in the suicide note that he was ending his life in Maharashtra because he had faith in the state government.

“My father was aware that if he ended his life in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the suicide note would have vanished and no case would have been registered,” he said.

Mumbai police on Tuesday lodged an FIR and registered a case of abetment to suicide against the accused after the Uddhav Thackeray government announced a probe by a special investigation team (SIT).

Raut, the Sena’s leader in the Lok Sabha, raised the subject during Zero Hour and waved a copy of Delkar’s suicide note.

He recalled that Delkar had earlier written to the Speaker about harassment, and that this letter was sent to the House privilege committee.

“The senior MP had circulated his letter among all members of the House. At the privilege committee meeting on February 12 he had (said) that if his harassment by the officers of the Union Territory was not stopped, he would be compelled to commit suicide,” Raut said.

He added: “Therefore, through you (the Speaker), I want to request the Prime Minister to suspend the administrative officers, the SP (superintendent of police) and the collector responsible for the suicide of the MP and start criminal proceedings against them under 304 of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).”

Delkar had posted a video a few months ago threatening to resign from Parliament if the officials harassing him were not curbed.

Delay worry

Sources said Sena and Congress leaders were upset at the state government’s slow probe in the suicide case at a time when the BJP was attacking the administration over the discovery of an explosives-laden vehicle near Mukesh Ambani’s home in February.

But state home minister Anil Deshmukh, who is from the NCP, has apparently justified his cautious approach saying the police were discreetly examining the entire range of issues.

A senior Congress politician from Mumbai suggested the BJP’s “belligerence on the Ambani issue” was probably a pressure tactic to ensure the state authorities went slow on the Delkar case.

Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole on Wednesday said Ambani’s home was 1km from where the car was parked and would have been in no danger.