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

Sahil Gehlot planned to send his partner Nikki Yadav to Goa on February 10 -- roughly 12 hours before he was going to get married again, this time to a woman chosen by his family, officers associated with the investigations in Nikki’s gruesome murder said on Tuesday.

Sahil and Nikki got married at an Arya Samaj Mandir in Greater Noida in October 2020, and were living together. According to police, Sahil killed Nikki on February 10 by strangling her with a mobile phone cord at the Nigambodh crematorium, and drove nearly 40 kilometres with body to a dhaba owned by his family in north-west Delhi’s Mitraon village.

Officers said that Sahil has told them that Nikki liked to travel alone, and he had booked a train ticket Goa for her on February 10, so that he could marry the second woman. However, the plan failed since a common friend told her about Sahil’s engagement with another woman, soon after the ceremony on February 9, they said.

“Sahil thought that Nikki would leave for Goa in the train from Hazrat Nizamuddin station on February 10 morning, and he would be able to get married in peace at the Mandothi village in Haryana’s Jhajjar district,” said a police officer, aware of the matter.

A second police officer said Nikki loved travelling and she had visited several destinations in Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh with Sahil, after the two got in a relationship in 2018.

He added that initially, the couple had decided to go together. However, Sahil backed out citing some urgent work at home. “Ever since his engagement and wedding preparations were on, Sahil had started distancing himself from Nikki,” the second officer said.

Investigators said that after Nikki learnt about Sahil’s engagement she had been confronting him about his plans to marry again. When Sahil told his family that Nikki might show up at the wedding venue, they asked him to eliminate her. The police have arrested five members of Sahil’s family, including his father Virendra Singh and two cousins – Ashish Kumar and Naveen Kumar – and two friends for their alleged involvement in the conspiracy to Nikki’s murder and for helping Sahil to tamper with the evidence.

The second officer said that after his engagement, Sahil left in Ashish’s Hyundai Verna car for Nikki’s Uttam Nagar flat, to pacify her. He reached her flat around 1.30am on February 10. “We spoke to Nikki’s sister who was present at the flat. She said the couple had a heated argument for around an hour. Sahil assured Nikki that he will not marry the woman he was engaged to. To convince her, he agreed to accompany her to Goa in the same train. The couple then tried to book his ticket online, but tickets were not available,” he added.

According to the police, the couple had gone to Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station to get Gehlot’s ticket from the station counter. But when they did not get a ticket, they decided to leave for Himachal Pradesh in a bus. They drove to Anand Vihar interstate bus terminal (ISBT), where they learnt that buses for Himachal Pradesh leave from Kashmere Gate ISBT. The two then reached Kashmere Gate but got into an altercation, when Sahil started getting calls from his family members, asking him to return home and attend pre-wedding rituals.

“To avoid public attention, Sahil parked the car at Nigambodh Ghat’s parking lot and strangled her inside the vehicle with a mobile data cable. Thereafter, he informed his family members and friends about her murder and left for his family-owned dhaba in Mitraon village with Nikki’s body strapped on the front seat. His two cousins and two friends met him in Paschim Vihar and accompanied him to the dhaba, where they shifted her body into the car’s trunk, left the vehicle there, returned home and proceeded to the wedding venue in the evening,” the second officer said.

Sahil will be produced before the court on Wednesday, the police said.