Uttarakhand S.I.T. to file charge sheet in receptionist murder case

A special investigation team is ready to press charges against three persons suspected of murdering a receptionist at a resort in Pauri Garhwal district, Uttarakhand police said on Saturday.

The 500 page charge sheet, which contains statements of 100 witnesses and 30 pieces of documentary evidence, will be filed in a Pauri Garhwal court on Monday, V Murugesan, additional director general of police, law and order, said at a media briefing at the state police headquarters. “We have sent the charge sheet to the office of the prosecuting officer and it will be filed in the court on Monday,” he said.

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The three accused — resort owner Pulkit Arya, Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta — will be charged under sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 354A (sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code and 5 (1) b of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act that deals with prostitution.

“A supplementary charge sheet will be submitted after further investigation under section 173(8) of the Code of Criminal Procedure,” Murugesan said. “We have been trying to get the approval for the narco and polygraph tests of the accused.”

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The Pauri Garhwal court will be hearing the police application for the narco test on December 22. On December 12, during the first hearing, accused Gupta had sought 10 days’ time to give consent to the narco test. Police had moved the application in court on December 9.

Since the key accused in the case is the son of a former leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the opposition Congress has questioned the fairness in the investigation, asking why police were not revealing the name of the VIP for whom the victim was being pressurised for sexual favours.

The 19-year-old woman, who was working as a receptionist at the Vanantara Resort in Pauri Garhwal district, was allegedly murdered by the three accused for refusing to provide “extra services” to the VIP guests, police said. A WhatsApp conversation between the victim and her close friend, which went viral on social media, hinted at the accused being forced to provide sexual favours to the VIP guest expected to visit the resort on September 19.

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The receptionist’s body was found on September 24, six days after she went missing from her home. The girl was murdered on September 18 by the three arrested men after she refused their demands, police said. All three accused are in jail.

Facing public outrage, Uttarakhand police had formed an SIT under deputy inspector general P Renuka Devi to investigate the matter. On November 11, police told HT that their forensic team didn’t recover any forensic evidence from the resort.

Uttarakhand police on several occasions had said they had collected the necessary evidence from the resort before a bulldozer destroyed portions of it, including the room that was allotted to the receptionist while she was working there. The bulldozer action had triggered a controversy, with the family of the victim, some locals and opposition parties alleging it was done deliberately to destroy evidence to save the son of expelled BJP leader Vinod Arya.

A Pauri Garhwal resident, Ashutosh Negi, has approached the Uttarakhand high court with the allegations.

Police failed to find the woman’s mobile phone. “We have received results of the electronic evidence -- mobile phones of the accused -- and other evidence collected from the crime scene from FSL (Forensic Science Laboratory) Chandigarh,” Murugesan said. “However, our team couldn’t find the receptionist’s mobile phone.”

Key accused Arya has a criminal past, police said. The first case against him was registered in 2009 for criminal trespassing, and the second in 2016 for fraud. His father Vinod Arya was recently booked by Haridwar police for allegedly attempting to sodomize his driver, and later trying to kill him.

In October, Pauri Garhwal police had invoked the Gangster Act against all three accused in the case.