NEW DELHI: In a major revelation in the Nikki Yadav case, the police have found the role of the accused's family in the murder of the 24-year-old woman and arrested five people, including the accused Sahil Gahlot's father, in this connection.
During the interrogation of the accused, the police found that both Sahil and Nikki had already solemnized their marriage in 2020. "She was actually his wife and not live-in partner," a senior Delhi Police official said.
The 24-year-old Nikki Yadav was allegedly strangled to death with a data cable by Sahil Gahlot after which he stashed her body in a refrigerator, 45 Km away from the place he had killed the woman. Just 8 hours later, showing extreme insensitivity, the accused married another woman on the same day.
The deceased Nikki had been pleading before the accused Sahil, asking him not to go ahead with the marriage fixed by his family with another woman on February 10.
According to the police, the accused Sahil Gahlot then along with his father, two cousins Ashish and Naveen, and two friends Amar and Lokesh hatched a conspiracy to remove Nikki from their way.
"Accordingly, Sahil Gahlot executed the plan and murdered her and informed the other co-accused about it on the same day i.e. February 10 and then all of them went ahead with the marriage ceremony," Special Commissioner of Delhi Police, Ravindra Singh Yadav said.
The official said all the five co-accused were thoroughly interrogated and after verifying and ascertaining their role in the murder, they were all arrested. The police have added sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of the offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 202 (Intentional omission to give information of offence by person bound to inform), and 212 (Harbouring offender) of the Indian Penal Code to the FIR.
Notably, Sahil's cousin Naveen, who was also arrested, is a constable in Delhi Police.
According to sources, the police have so far learnt that on a fateful night, the accused Gehlot went to meet the victim woman at her residence late on February 9, probably around 12-1 am, in Uttam Nagar where both Nikki and her younger sister used to live together.
"He stayed there for 2-3 hours and then both of them left the house and went towards Nizammudin railway station. But as they didn't get a ticket, they changed their plan to go to Himachal Pradesh and reached ISBT, Kashmere Gate," an official said.
The cops are in the process of verifying these disclosures made by the accused and the probing team is scanning CCTV footage of the whole route to form a sequence of events.
It is when the couple reached ISBT, a serious argument ensued between them, possibly over the marriage of the accused Sahil. In between the argument, Sahil kept receiving back-to-back calls from his family, which he told the interrogators triggered him to his limits and he turned violent.
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The accused then strangled Nikki with his mobile phone data cable inside the car, probably around 8 am on February 10, the day he was supposed to get married to another woman. To hide the crime, Sahil then drove for nearly 45 Km from Kashmere gate to Mitraon village with Nikki's body.
For the whole 45 Km, the accused did not put Nikki's body in the car's boot but made her sit as if she was alive with a seat belt on. Later after stashing her body in the refrigerator of his Dhaba, he went back to his home and married another woman.
On Thursday, in a bid to establish the correct sequence of events, the Delhi Police recreated the crime scene and took the accused Sahil Gahlot to Kashmere Gate where he had allegedly murdered Nikki inside a car.
The accused Gehlot has told the investigators that after murdering Nikki Yadav, he deleted all chats and data from her mobile phone and kept it with him after taking out the sim card. The police recovered Nikki's mobile phone from Sahil Gehot's possession and have been sent for forensic examination.
Any argumentative chat between the accused and the victim would have been another piece of evidence that would have strengthened the case against Gehlot. Possibly, fearing that, he formatted the phone.