In a significant development, the Dhami govt has launched a massive damage control exercise and has had a meeting with Ankita’s parents 

Like the ghost of Banquo in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the ghost of 19-year-old receptionist Ankita Bhandari has come to haunt the BJP party in Uttarakhand. With the public pressure mounting in the state, CM Dhami has finally approached the centre to hold a CBI enquiry in the case.

Ankita was murdered in the most brutal manner by Pulkit Sharma, the son of BJP minister without portfolio Vinod Arya, who was a key member of chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami’s cabinet. Ankita had gone missing from the Vanantra Resort in the Pauri district on September 18, 2022. Her body was recovered five days later with several injury marks from the Chilla barrage on the Ganga-river canal near Rishikesh.

Two days before her death, Ankita had told her boyfriend, Pushpdeep, that Pulkit had been pressuring her to provide ‘extra services to a VIP’. When Pushpdeep asked whether the ‘extra service’ referred to sex, she replied in the affirmative, saying she was being offered Rs 10,000 for it. 

Following her death, Pushpdeep released a video in which she is heard saying, “I’m with these guys. I’m very scared.” The resort staff have attested on affidavit that Ankita was screaming and crying when she was being taken away by Pulkit and his associates.

Following public pressure, Pulkit Arya and two of his associates were convicted and are currently serving a jail sentence in Chamoli. But there has always been a question mark about the identity of the VIP. Several ministers had defended the Arya family, including the former state minister of finance, Premchand Aggarwal, who stated on record that the VIP referred to was a room and not a person. The extent of the SIT enquiry cover-up can be gauged from the fact that the report stated, “Ankita slipped and fell accidentally into the canal.”

Ankita’s mother and her father, Virendra Singh Bhandari, have refused to allow the case to die down, and in her FIR, Soni Devi named RSS organisational secretary Ajay Kumar as the VIP, insisting that his chat records two days before and after her death be made public.

Last year, the parents sat on dharna in the town of Srinagar in Pauri-Garhwal and have repeatedly raised questions as to “why are the Uttarakhand police doing a cover-up job on behalf of top politicians? How come the police are unable to get hold of Ajay Kumar’s chat records?” The Vanantra Resort is located in the Ganga Bhogpur area of the Yamkeshwar assembly constituency represented by MLA Renu Bisht. Renu Bisht and the then SDM, Pramod Kumar, had issued orders to raze the gate and the boundary wall of the resort and also demolish the room in which Ankita had lived in order to destroy all evidence. The JCB driver had submitted a signed affidavit before the court that he had been summoned to do so on September 23. Following the demolition of the room, a fire conveniently broke out on the premises on two successive days, obliterating whatever shred of evidence may have remained.

Anger over this cover-up has been brewing for the past three years. But by a strange twist of fate, an Uttarakhand-based actress, Urmila Sanawar, the wife of former BJP MLA Suresh Rathore from Haridwar’s Jwalapur, released a video of her husband in late December stating that the VIP present at the Vantara Resort on the night Ankita was killed was ‘Gatu’, a nickname given to the BJP national general secretary for Uttarakhand, Dushyant Kumar Gautam.

The revelations in this video created a fresh storm. Demonstrations have once again erupted across the state, with political parties and civil society having joined hands, demanding justice for ‘Uttarakhand ki Beti’. These protests bear an uncanny resemblance to the struggle that took place across the hill state prior to it becoming an independent state three decades ago.

Protests across the districts culminated in a massive demonstration outside Dhami’s residence on Sunday last. On Wednesday, the powerful ex-servicemen community held another demonstration in Dehradun, demanding a fair enquiry, and on January 11, another statewide demonstration demanding justice for Bhandari was held.

Several opposition parties, including the Congress, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, Uttarakhand Swabhiman Morcha (which led the UKSSSC paper leak protests in September), AAP, and the left parties, such as the CPI (M), CPI (ML), and SUCI, are participating actively in these protests.

But Dushyant Gautam is not taking this lying down. While the Haridwar police have filed four FIRs against Rathore and Sanawar, Gautam filed an FIR against Rathore and Sanawar at the Dalanwala police thana in Dehradun. He has also filed a Rs 2 crore defamation suit in the Delhi High Court against Sanawar and Rathore and against all the political parties that had participated in the Jan 4 rally in Dehradun. Initially, Sanawar refused to be cowed down but later went into hiding. However, she returned, and on Jan 8 deposed before the police. 

Meanwhile, in a significant development, the Dhami government has launched a massive damage control exercise. The CM had a meeting with Ankita’s parents on Wednesday evening; he also announced that he has asked the centre to hold a CBI enquiry in this case.Both Ankita’s parents seem unflinching in their resolve. Dhami is hoping the state-wide agitation will finally come to a halt. People, on the other hand, insist they will keep up the pressure till such time as the ‘VIPs’ are brought to book.