Sahil Gehlot allegedly murdered his girlfriend Nikki Yadav at 9am on February 10, got married to another woman roughly 12 hours later, and returned to his vehicle at 3am the following morning to shift the corpse into a refrigerator from the trunk, police officials said on Wednesday, offering new details of yet another case of intimate partner violence that has shocked the Capital.
Police are also probing whether the Gehlot family was aware of the murder, which took place a day after the 24-year-old suspect was engaged to the woman he would later marry. It was the engagement that purportedly triggered a fight between Gehlot and Yadav, which ended in the 22-year-old woman being fatally strangulated with a chord.
The clues are based on disclosures made by Gehlot during questioning, police said. “Gehlot disclosed that he strangled Yadav with a mobile data cable around 9am on February 10 and not around 2am as he revealed earlier. He reached the dhaba around 11am with her body in the front passenger seat, secured with a seat belt. He shifted the body in the car’s boot and parked the vehicle in the premises of the dhaba, locked the eatery from outside and returned home,” an officer involved in the case, asking not to be added.
Gehlot, the officer added, told his interrogators that after leaving the car and the body at the dhaba, he reached home and dressed for the wedding ceremony. In the evening, he, his family members, relatives, neighbours and other guests, reached Mandothi village where his wedding was solemnised. Around 1am on February 11, he returned to his Mitraon village home with his newlywed wife.
“When most of the family members and guests went to sleep, Gehlot left for the dhaba in his own car (a Tata Nexon). Around 3.30am, he removed Yadav’s body from the car’s boot and dragged it inside the room where the fridge was kept. He removed all the trays and stuffed the body inside. He left Yadav’s bag containing her clothes and other belongings near the fridge. Gehlot kept her phone with him. He had already switched it off after murdering her. He also deleted all their chats and call details of the two previous days,” a second investigator said, asking not to be named.
The case follows close on the heels of the revelations around the Shraddha Walkar murder case: the 27-year-old woman was allegedly killed by her boyfriend Aaftab Poonawala, who then chopped her body into at least 35 pieces over two days, stored them in a refrigerator for about three months, and dumped the parts piece by piece. The crime remained undetected between when it took place in May and November 12, when police said Poonawala confessed to the crime after the woman’s estranged family realised she had been missing.
Like the Walkar case, police are now focussing on gathering evidence that will corroborate Gehlot’s confessions, which are not by themselves adequate for a conviction in a court of law.
“We are probing all aspects related to the case and collecting scientific evidence to make it a strong case before the court of law for conviction of Gehlot. All his disclosures made during the interrogation have to be verified and corroborated with scientific and technical evidence,” said Ravindra Yadav, special commissioner of police (crime).
Police on Wednesday secured five-day custody of Gehlot.
Gehlot had planned to dispose of Yadav’s body by bundling it into a suitcase and dumping it in a drain in Delhi but post-wedding rituals kept him busy, the first officer quoted above said, citing the suspect’s disclosures.
He made two visits to his “Khao-Piyo” dhaba on February 11 and 12 to check on the body. The dhaba was closed because of the wedding and all staffers were working at his house, the officers said.
After the autopsy at Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital on Wednesday, Yadav’s body was handed over to her father and other relatives, who demanded that “Gehlot should be hanged to death”. Her last rites were performed at her village in Jhajjar.
Police officers associated with the case said Gehlot showed no remorse.
“The fridge was placed in one corner of a room with its door facing the wall so that the body does not fall out of it,” said the first officer cited above.
After shifting the body to the trunk, he returned home and slept. Later in the evening, he left for Mandothi village for his wedding with the woman chosen by his family members and whom he was engaged to on February 9, the night before the murder.
Investigators said that on Thursday, they will take Gehlot to the routes he took on February 9 and 10 — from when he picked up Yadav from her flat in Uttam Nagar and stuffed her body in the fridge. Gehlot has told police he reached Mitraon Village from Kashmere Gate ISBT via Paschim Vihar, crossing at least four districts and driving over 40km without being stopped at a check post.
“We have to corroborate his versions with technical evidence such as the location of his cellphone and footage of CCTV cameras in which the car’s movement was captured,” the second officer said, and added that the crime did not seem to be pre-planned.
Police said Yadav lived with her sister in their rented Uttam Nagar flat and she is the last person who saw her alive and leaving the flat with Gehlot around 1.30am on February 10 – information that will be crucial for prosecution.
Apart from the sister, the police have also identified at least three people known to the couple. “One of them sent a photograph of Gehlot’s engagement with another woman to Yadav, and that is how she learnt about it. We will record the statement of the sender. Gehlot’s family members were aware of his live-in relationship with Yadav. But they never approved of it and forced him to marry the woman of their choice. Their statement will also be recorded,” added the officer.
The motive
Gehlot, investigators said citing his disclosures, strangled Yadav in a fit of rage as she was threatening to file a criminal case against them if he married the woman chosen by his family.
On Yadav’s insistence, Gehlot agreed to flee with her to Himachal Pradesh. They planned to park the car at Kashmere Gate ISBT and board a bus. But Gehlot changed his mind when he started getting calls from his family members, asking him to return home since pre-wedding rituals were pending and getting delayed because of his absence, said another police officer, aware of the case.
“When Yadav found that Gehlot was adamant on returning to his family, she asked him to get into a suicide pact with her. But Gehlot refused and it made her annoyed. She scolded him for ruining her life and began threatening him with a criminal case. It led to a heated argument between them and during that Gehlot strangled her using his cellphone’s data cable,” added the officer, citing the suspect’s statements to investigators.
