A teen receptionist's 2022 murder becomes political flashpoint: Revisiting the Ankita Bhandari case

Protests against 19-year-old Ankita Bhandari's murder rocked Uttarakhand and have now reached Delhi.

The parents of Ankita Bhandari, the 19-year-old receptionist who was murdered in Uttarakhand in September 2022, staged a protest at India Gate in New Delhi against the appointment of Dushyant Gautam as Sikkim governor, bringing the case back into focus.

On Wednesday evening, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi met Ankita Bhandari’s parents near India Gate and joined their sit-in protest. The parents were detained at 4am on Thursday and released later.

The murder remains a major political issue in Uttarakhand, which is scheduled to go to polls early next year.

Ankita, a resident of Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal district, worked as a receptionist at Vanantra Resort in Yamkeshwar, near Rishikesh. She was murdered on September 18, 2022.

Resort owner Pulkit Arya, the son of expelled BJP leader Vinod Arya, and two of his employees, Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta, were accused of killing her after she allegedly refused to provide “extra services” to resort guests. They would later be convicted.

The accused were arrested on September 23 that year and allegedly confessed to the crime. Ankita’s body was recovered from the Chilla canal in Rishikesh a day later, following the police questioning of the accused.

In March 2023, a local court in Kotdwar framed charges against the three under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), along with Section 5 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, which deals with “procuring, inducing or taking a person for the sake of prostitution”.

Arya was also charged under Section 354A of the IPC, which deals with sexual harassment.

The Dushyant Gautam angle

Even after the convictions, the case remained in the spotlight, with the victim’s parents demanding that the role of Dushyant Gautam, who served as the BJP’s Uttarakhand in-charge from November 2020 to August 2026, be examined.

The demand follows the release of an audio clip in December 2025 by actress Urmila Sanawar, who claims to be the wife of former BJP MLA Suresh Rathore. The purported recording of a telephone conversation with Rathore allegedly suggested that a BJP leader was involved in the case.

Rathore, who was heard or named in the recordings, dismissed them as AI-generated.

However, the audio clip triggered protests across Uttarakhand, with demonstrators demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe. The state government ordered a CBI investigation on January 11 this year.

The Sikkim governor-designate, Gautam has not been named as an accused in any of the cases linked to Ankita’s murder. He has instead filed a case against Rathore, Sanawar, the Uttarakhand Congress, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and other unidentified individuals over allegations linking him to the murder.

Amid the controversy, Haridwar Police formed an SIT in December 2025 to investigate the authenticity of the audio recordings and the claims made in them.

In the first week of January, Ankita’s father wrote to Dhami seeking a CBI investigation into the allegations of a “VIP” being involved in the case. He also demanded that the probe be conducted under the supervision of a Supreme Court judge.

The father told HT at the time: “I have written a letter to the CM in which I have written that the name of the VIP due to whom my daughter died, has not been revealed yet.”

On January 10, Uttarakhand Police registered a fresh FIR.

CM Dhami terms it ‘conspiracy’

Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, in January this year, criticised attempts to create what he described as an unnecessary atmosphere in the state based on a purported audio clip.

He maintained that the judicial process had reached its logical conclusion and that the culprits had received stringent punishment.

“The audio clip also talks at one place that she committed suicide. At other point, it talks she was killed. Is this some kind of conspiracy? Just after the viral audio and video clips, a press conference was held in New Delhi (by Congress),” Dhami had said.

Conviction and life sentences

In May 2025, a Kotdwar court in Pauri Garhwal district convicted all three accused and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Arya was sentenced to life imprisonment under Sections 302, 201 and 354A of the IPC. Bhaskar, the resort manager, and Gupta were sentenced to life imprisonment under Sections 302 and 201.

All three subsequently challenged their convictions before the Uttarakhand high court.