Body of ex-model Divya Pahuja recovered from Haryana canal

Days after she was shot dead in a Gurugram hotel, the body of former model Divya Pahuja was recovered from a canal in Haryana’s Fatehabad district on Saturday, according to police.

The body was recovered based on information provided by accused Balraj Gill, who had disposed of the body and was arrested from the Kolkata airport on Thursday, police officials said.

Pahuja was taken to Hotel City Point by five people and shot in the head inside room number 111 because she had allegedly been extorting money from the hotel owner, Abhijeet Singh (56), by blackmailing him with his ”obscene pictures”, police had said earlier.

Gurugram Assistant Commissioner of Police (Crime) Varun Kumar Dahiya said Pahuja’s body was recovered from the subsidiary canal of the Bhakra canal in Fatehabad’s Tohana.

It will be sent for post-mortem examination, he said.

CCTV footage from Hotel City Point showed the accused, including Singh, purportedly dragging Pahuja’s body wrapped in a white sheet through the lobby. They later fled the hotel in a car with the body in the boot.

According to police, Singh handed over the car with the body to Balraj Gill (28) around a kilometre from the hotel. The car was later found abandoned at a bus stand in Punjab’s Patiala.

Gill was nabbed at the Kolkata airport on Thursday and based on disclosures made by him, police launched an extensive operation to find Pahuja’s body, the officials said.

Gill disposed of the body with another accused, Ravi Banga, they said.

ACP (Crime) Dahiya said Banga was yet to be arrested.

Police had earlier arrested four people — Abhijeet, Hemraj, Omprakash and Megha — in connection with the case.

Pahuja was out on bail in a case related to alleged fake encounter of gangster Sandeep Gadoli.

Gadoli, a dreaded gangster from Gurugram, was killed in a shootout in Mumbai on February 6, 2016. Later, Mumbai police said Gadoli was lured into a trap with the help of his ”girlfriend” Pahuja and killed in a fake encounter.

The conspiracy was hatched by Virendra Kumar alias Binder Gujjar, who ran a rival gang, with Haryana Police officials. Gujjar was in prison at the time of the shootout and he roped in his brother and Pahuja to execute his plan.

Later, an FIR was registered against five police personnel, Pahuja, her mother and others.

The Bombay High Court had granted bail to Pahuja in June last year, over seven years after she was arrested in connection with Gadoli’s murder.