Ankita Bhandari murder: Family agrees to perform final rites
The police have arrested three persons, including the son of a former Uttarakhand minister, in connection with the case. Protests erupt outside mortuary.
The family of a woman who was murdered near the town of Rishikesh in Uttarakhand earlier this week travelled to the mortuary on Sunday to take her body to perform final rites, ANI reported.
In the morning, the family had refused to take the woman’s body and demanded a post-mortem report. Protests erupted outside the mortuary as the family arrived at the mortuary to collect the body.
Uttarakhand: Massive protest erupts outside mortuary in Srinagar, Pauri Garwhal dist, where Ankita Bhandari's father arrived to take her body for last rites
— ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) September 25, 2022
She was allegedly murdered in Rishikesh by now expelled BJP leader Vinod Arya's son Pulkit Arya who was arrested yesterday pic.twitter.com/kqyopLrI6l
#GroundReport | Outraged Locals Seek Justice For Murdered Uttarakhand Teen, Block Highway
— NDTV (@ndtv) September 25, 2022
NDTV's Akshay Dongare reports from Pauri #AnkitaBhandari pic.twitter.com/rsTRCLWr2w
Officials of the State Disaster Response Force recovered the body of the woman, Ankita Bhandari, from the Chilla Canal in Rishikesh on Saturday morning. She was the receptionist at the Vanantara resort, which was owned by Pulkit Arya, the son of former Uttarakhand minister Vinod Arya.
Pulkit Arya, resort manager Saurabh Bhaskar and assistant manager Ankit Gupta had filed a missing report about the woman after her parents could not find her in her room on Monday. On Friday, the police said that Arya and his associates admitted to having killed Bhandari and throwing her body into a canal.
A preliminary report released by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Rishikesh said that the woman appeared to have sustained injuries suggestive of blunt force trauma before her death, according to PTI. However, the report said that she died of drowning.
The woman’s father Virendra Singh Bhandari said that he was not satisfied with the provisional postmortem report.
“Her last rites will not be performed until we get the final detailed report,” he said.
On Friday, Pulkit Arya’s resort was demolished following his confession to the police. The woman’s brother, Ajay Singh Bhandari, said that the action may have been an attempt to destroy evidence, PTI reported.
The three accused men have been sent to judicial custody for 14 days. They have been booked under Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) and Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
On Saturday, the BJP had expelled Vinod Arya from the party after the allegations against his son came to light.
Meanwhile, the Rishikesh-Badrinath national highway was blocked on Sunday by people demanding justice for Ankita Bhandari, PTI reported. They demanded that the perpetrators of the crime be hanged immediately.