An Uttarakhand court on Friday sentenced the son of a former Bharatiya Janata Party leader and his two associates to life imprisonment in the 2022 Ankita Bhandari murder case, India Today reported.

The Additional District and Sessions Court in Kotdwar also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 each on Pulkit Arya, son of former BJP leader Vinod Arya, and his associates Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta. All three were convicted for the murder of the 19-year-old.

Bhandari was a receptionist at a resort in Uttarakhand’s Rishikesh that was owned by Pulkit Arya.

She went missing on September 18, 2022.

A day later, Pulkit Arya, along with Bhaskar, who was the manager of the resort, and Ankit Gupta, its assistant manager, filed a missing person report.

They later confessed to killing Bhandari by pushing her into a canal after an altercation.

Messages sent by Bhandari to a friend on the messaging platform WhatsApp, which were uncovered later, suggested that the men had allegedly tried to force the 19-year-old into prostitution.

Bhandari’s body was recovered from the Chilla Canal in Rishikesh six days after she went missing. A preliminary forensic examination of visceral samples ruled out that she had been sexually assaulted.

A Special Investigation Team had filed a 500-page chargesheet listing 97 witnesses in the case, of whom 47 testified during the trial that began in March 2023.

Pulkit Arya and the two co-accused were charged under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to murder, destruction of evidence and sexual harassment. They were also booked under the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act and the Gangster Act.

The BJP had expelled Vinod Arya in September 2022.