Former model shot dead in Gurugram hotel
urugram: A former model was shot dead in a hotel room here months after being granted bail after spending seven years in jail in connection with a Gurugram gangster’s fake encounter case in Mumbai, police said Wednesday.
They said five people took Divya Pahuja (27) to the hotel room on Tuesday night and shot her in the head allegedly because she used to extort money from the hotel-owner by blackmailing him with his “obscene pictures”, a claim denied by her family.
The Gurugram Police said they arrested three of them while they were taking the body to dump somewhere.
According to the police, the three arrested accused include hotel-owner Abhijeet Singh (56), a native of Model Town in Hisar, and his two employees -- Hemraj (28), a resident of Nepal, and Omprakash (23), a resident of Jalpaiguri, West Bengal.
A CCTV footage shows the accused purportedly dragging the body wrapped in a white sheet through the lobby of Hotel City Point.
Police said Pahuja was shot dead allegedly by the hotel owner because she extorted money from him after blackmailing him with his “obscene pictures”.
But her sister Naina Pahuja claimed in a police complaint that slain gangster Sandeep Gadoli’s sister Sudesh Kataria and brother Brahm Prakash Kataria gave money to Singh to kill the former model.
Gadoli, a dreaded gangster from Gurugram, was killed in a shootout in Mumbai on February 6, 2016. Later, the Mumbai police said Gadoli had been lured into a trap with the help of his “girlfriend” Pahuja and killed in a fake encounter.
Following Naina Pahuja’s complaint in the instant case, an FIR was registered under sections 302 (murder), 201 (hiding evidence), 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code at sector 14 police station and police are questioning the arrested accused.
Singh told police during initial interrogation that Hotel City Point belongs to him but he has given it on lease.
He alleged Divya Pahuja used to blackmail him using his “obscene pictures” and extort money. He said she wanted a huge sum this time. Police spokesperson Subhash Boken said, “Accused Abhijeet said that on January 2 he had come to Hotel City Point with Divya Pahuja and he wanted to delete his obscene photos from her phone but Divya Pahuja did not tell the password of her phone.
