The Mumbai Sessions Court on Friday sentenced two persons to life in the 2012 murder of actor and model Meenakshi Thapa, ANI reported. Additional Sessions Judge SG Shette had found Amit Jaiswal and Preeti Surin guilty of murder and kidnapping for ransom on Wednesday.

Thapa, an aspiring actress from Dehradun, had appeared in a few films and TV serials, and in Madhur Bhandarkar’s film Heroine, starring Kareena Kapoor.

According to the prosecution, Jaiswal and Surin befriended 26-year-old Thapa on the sets of Heroine. The accused worked as model coordinators. When Thapa told them that she came from an affluent family, Jaiswal and Surin conspired to abduct her for ransom, the Hindustan Times reported.

The lured Thapa to Gorakhpur on the pretext of work. They then abducted her and demanded Rs 15 lakh as ransom from Thapa’s family. However, when they realised that Thapa had lied about her family’s wealth and that her family could not pay up, they murdered her, PTI reported.

The remains of Thapa’s body, with the head severed, was found in the sewage tank of a house in Allahabad.

“There was no eyewitness, but I appreciate the job done by the Mumbai Crime Branch, as it was due to their investigation that the chain of events was established,” special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told PTI on Wednesday. “Based on that, we could prove that Jaiswal and Surin had murdered the actor.”