Divya Pahuja, the 27-year-old former old, was still lying dead in the premises of the city hotel when the police team responded to a complaint and checked the wrong room on the same floor as Pahuja’s body.
Pahuja is an accused in the murder of her ex-boyfriend and Gurugram’s most wanted gangster Sandeep Gadoli. She had conspired to get Gadoli killed in an alleged fake police encounter in 2016, Mumbai.
She was shot dead at a city hotel in Gurugram on Tuesday night by the owner of the establishment, Abhijeet Singh.
Singh along with two other hotel staffers, Omprakash and Hemraj, was arrested on Wednesday. The three were sent to a five-day police remand on Thursday.
Pahuja was allegedly blackmailing Singh and extorting money, with the help of some purported obscene videos and photos of him. According to a Times of India report, Singh — the key accused — was in an inebriated state at the time of committing the crime.
Anoop Gupta, who took the hotel — Hotel City Point — on lease from Singh had informed the police about the presence of a woman’s body in the hotel around 9 pm on Tuesday.
A team which arrived soon after, reportedly only checked room 114, a room permanently reserved in Singh’s name at the hotel’s first floor. However, since they did not find anything to be suspicious, they left from there.
A police source told ToI that the body was lying in room 111, which was also on the same floor.
After cops left the scene, at around 10:42 pm, the hotel lights were turned off and Singh, supposedly with the help of a friend and the two staffers carried the body — wrapped in a white sheet — to a BMW car, a source while citing the CCTV footage time stamp said.
Then at 11 pm, Pahuja’s parents called the police about her disappearance. A team again went to the hotel and checked the CCTV footage, which seemed to show a body being dragged from the first floor and put into the BMW.
Vijay Pratap Singh, DCP (crime) on Thursday said that the BMW car is registered in the name of Singh’s friend, Ajay Mehta. The car was found abandoned at a bus stand in Punjab’s Patiala, but the body is yet to be found.
The DCP also noted that it is likely, that Balraj, an unidentified person, also assisted Singh in carrying the body.
“From initial investigation, it is clear that Abhijeet shot Pahuja inside the hotel room. Hemraj and Omprakash helped him bring the body out of the hotel. Balraj and another person took the body in the car towards Punjab. More arrests will be made and details will be found from their interrogations,” the DCP added.
However, police noted that they have not yet ruled out the possibility of other persons being involved in the murder.
A report from news agency PTI said that according to Mumbai Police, Virender Kumar alias Binder Gujjar — Gadoli’s rival — allegedly conspired with the Haryana Police officials to kill Gadoli.
At the time of gangster Gadoli’s encounter, but he still hatched the conspiracy with the help of his brother Manoj and roped Pahuja to honey trap the Gurugram gangster.
As per plan, Gadoli’s then girlfriend Pahuja, lured him into a trap, following which he was killed in a fake encounter on February 7, 2016.
Pahuja, after 7 years in jail, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court in June 2023.
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