Will challenge lower court verdict in HC, seek death penalty for convicts: Ankita Bhandari’s parents

A bigger battle is yet to be fought to get the death penalty for the three men who killed our daughter, said Soni Devi, the mother of Ankita Bhandari who was murdered by a resort operator and his two employees in Uttarakhand in 2022.

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Hours after a district court in Kotwar on Friday sentenced the three men to rigorous life imprisonment in the case, Devi said that she was not satisfied with the lower court’s verdict but it must have given some peace to the soul of her daughter.

A bigger battle is yet to be fought so that the killers get the death penalty and people think a thousand times before doing this to anyone’s daughter, said Devi as she broke into tears while talking to reporters after the verdict.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Reena Negi convicted resort operator Pulkit Arya and his two employees Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta and sentenced them to life imprisonment. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 72,000 on Arya and Rs 62,000 on each of the other two accused, Special Public Prosecutor Avnish Negi.

Ankita (19), who worked as a receptionist at Vanantra Resort located in Yamkeshwar of Pauri district, was murdered on September 18, 2022, by Arya, Bhaskar and Gupta.

According to the prosecution, Bhandari and Arya had a dispute over something after which the three pushed the woman into the Cheela canal in Rishikesh.

After her body was found from the canal, the police arrested all three.

Pulkit Arya is the son of former BJP leader Vinod Arya. As soon as the matter came to light, the party showed the door to Vinod Arya.

Only a mother can understand the pain of losing a daughter, Devi said, adding that she will be satisfied only when her daughter’s killers get the death penalty while she is alive.

Ankita’s father Virendra Bhandari said that he wanted the death penalty for his daughter’s murderers, so he would challenge the lower court’s decision in the High Court.

“Our demand was that the way they killed our daughter, they should also have been given the death penalty,” Virendra Bhandari told reporters.

He also demanded a probe into the involvement of BJP MLA from Yamkeshwar Renu Bisht and a “VIP” whose names came up in the case.

The parents thanked people for their support and said that they would approach the High Court to get a bigger punishment for the culprits in the case.

A large number of police force was deployed in the court in view of the verdict in the case. The court premises were cordoned off by more than 450 policemen.