Nikki murder: Victim’s diary to inform Delhi police charge sheet

The personal diary of 22-year-old Nikki Yadav, who was murdered in February, forms a crucial link in a chain of evidence, confessions and witness statements the police will use to prosecute Sahil Gehlot in what was the Capital’s second shocking murder of a young woman by an intimate partner in the last year.

Notes from the diary are part of a nearly 250-page chargesheet that the police is expected to file next week, officials aware of it said, detailing some key aspects of the indictment, including Yadav’s detailing of specific incidents and of Gehlot’s reluctance to marry her, which was the main motive for her murder.

Read here: Sahil planned to send Nikki to Goa on the day of his second wedding

“In the last few pages, she wrote about her sadness and depression because Gehlot was not able to convince his parents on their relationship and wedding. She mentioned Gehlot telling her that ‘he did not want his parents to die over a girl’ and that he did not want to go against his family. She wrote that Gehlot was not supporting her and was not standing by her side,” said an officer, asking not to be named.

Yadav’s murder came to light in February, at a time when the Capital was reeling from shocking revelations in the Shraddha Walkar case. Gehlot allegedly murdered Yadav on February 10 in the parking lot of Delhi’s Nigambodh Ghat crematorium, drove more than 40km to his family-owned restaurant in north-west Delhi’s Najafgarh, where he left the body in the trunk to return home to marry another woman later in the evening, before returning later that night to stuff the body into a refrigerator.

Gehlot, members of his family and his friends are behind bars for their roles, which include plotting the murder and aiding and abetting the crime and attempts to destroy evidence.

In the diary, Yadav mentioned her secret wedding with Gehlot at an Arya Samaj Temple in Greater Noida in October 2020, and the subsequent problems that cropped up due to it, the officer quoted above said, and added that the mentioning of the couple’s relationship is in at least 20 of the 50 pages.

According to the officer, the contents of the diary suggested that Yadav was upset and worried about facing her family members if they learnt about her relationship and the secret wedding with Gehlot.

Investigators have recorded statements of more than 40 witnesses.

These include Yadav’s sister and her friend, who were the last persons to see Yadav alive and leaving the rented flat with Gehlot in his cousin’s white Hyundai Verna car around 5 am on February 10, and a security guard at Nigam Bodh Ghat, who had seen the couple in the car at the parking lot where she was finally strangled to death, according to disclosures made by Gehlot.

“Since we doubted that at least a couple of witnesses, including the friend of Yadav’s sister, may turn hostile because of different reasons, their statements were recorded before a magistrate under section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). We did not want to take any risk as them turning hostile would weaken the case against the accused,” said a second officer, asking not to be named.

“Initially, Gehlot claimed he committed the entire crime by himself. But technical investigation revealed that he killed Yadav on the directions of his father Virendra Singh; his two cousins, Ashish Kumar and Naveen Kumar, who is a constable in Delhi Police, and two friends, Lokesh Singh and Amar Singh. They forced him to get rid of Yadav after they learnt that she had learnt about his engagement on February 9 and was threatening to reach the venue and tell everyone that he was already married to her. The six held a meeting at the engagement venue itself, after which Gehlot left in the car to kill Yadav,” the officer added.

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Yadav, who came from Haryana’s Jhajjar, and Gehlot, from Mitraon village near Delhi’s Najafgarh, met in 2018 while they were preparing for entrance exams at different coaching centres in Uttam Nagar and took buses on the same route. After courting for nearly two years, the couple got married at a secret ceremony at an Arya Samaj Temple in Greater Noida. They started living together in a rented flat. Gehlot began ignoring Yadav after his family fixed his wedding with another woman sometime around December 2022, the police said.