Ankita Bhandari case: Conviction rejuvenates Cong as questions remain on ‘VIP guest’

The conviction by an Uttarakhand court of Pulkit Arya, son of expelled BJP leader Vinod Arya, in the 2022 Ankita Bhandari molestation and murder case has injected some aggression into an otherwise comatose state Congress unit.

Having lost two consecutive assembly polls and unable to win a single Lok Sabha seat in Uttarakhand since 2014, the Congress has threatened to launch a prolonged agitation to ensure “complete justice for Ankita” and expose the ruling BJP’s “attempts to scuttle a fair investigation in the case in order to protect a VIP”. Though the next Uttarakhand assembly polls are due only in February 2027, the Congress has already declared that it would have the murder case “reinvestigated by a Special Investigation Team” if it comes to power.

The Congress’s newfound belligerence kicked in the moment a court in Uttarakhand’s Pauri district convicted Pulkit and his aides, Ankit Gupta and Saurabh Bhaskar, in the case. On May 30, the court found the trio guilty on charges that include murder, concealing evidence, and molestation, among others, and awarded Pulkit life imprisonment.

When Ankita went missing

The case dates back to September 2022 when the body of 19-year-old Ankita Bhandari, who worked and lived at the Vanantara Resort in Rishikesh, was found in the Chilla Canal six days after she went missing. Preliminary investigations in the case had indicated that days before she went missing, Ankita had informed her friend Pushp (later a key witness in the case), of facing harassment at the resort and that she wanted to quit her job of a receptionist, which financial constraints of her family had forced her to take just months earlier.

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On September 18, the day she went missing, the resort staff had seen Ankita have an argument with Pulkit. She had also called Pulkit at around 8.30 pm that night — the last call the latter received from her — telling him that she wanted to leave the resort immediately and that she was being pressured by Pulkit to “provide special services to a VIP”. Shortly thereafter, Ankita was seen leaving the secluded resort with Pulkit and his close aides, Ankit and Saurabh, both Vanantara employees, but did not return to the property with them. On September 24, six days after her father, Virendra Bhandari, a security guard, had spent running between offices of the revenue police and the regular state police pleading for an investigation into his daughter’s disappearance, Ankita’s body was recovered from Rishikesh’s Chilla Canal.

The mystery ‘VIP’ guest

The interrogation of Pulkit, Ankit, and Saurabh revealed that Ankita had been thrown into the canal on the day of her disappearance. Further investigations, including into WhatsApp chats between Ankita and Pushp, revealed that Pulkit had been repeatedly forcing her to provide “extra special services” to a yet unnamed “VIP guest” in exchange for ₹10,000 — equivalent to her one month’s salary as Vanantara’s receptionist — a pressure she resisted and over which she had a verbal altercation with Pulkit on the day she went missing.

The case had triggered an instant political storm and public outrage across Uttarakhand on account of its grisly details, Pulkit's political connections, and the salacious rumours that surrounded it.

Controversies

The resort, hurriedly bulldozed in the aftermath of the case, was owned by Pulkit’s father, Vinod Arya, who had the rank of minister of state in the Trivendra Singh Rawat-led BJP government (2017 to 2021) on account of being chairman of the Uttarakhand Mati Kala Board. When outrage over Pulkit’s BJP connections refused to die down, Vinod was expelled from the party.

Also Read: Ankita murder: Resort operator, 2 others sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment

Controversies, however, continued to dog the ruling party. BJP’s Yamkeshwar MLA Renu Bisht soon triggered a fresh storm when she got parts of the Vanantara resort bulldozed. The bulldozer action in the middle of an ongoing probe was dubbed by the Congress, Ankita’s family, and the public at large as a “cover up” meant to “destroy evidence” since Vanantara was where the deceased worked and lived at the time of the incident and where she was harassed and molested.

Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami’s public praise for Bisht’s “swift action” and his emphatic rejection of demands by Ankita’s family and the Congress party for a court-monitored CBI probe into the murder case further strengthened the perception of a “cover up”.

Alleged ‘cover up’

Curiously, in the nearly three years that have passed between Ankita’s murder and Pulkit’s conviction, neither the court nor the Uttarakhand police made any visible attempt to identify and expose the VIP for whom Pulkit wanted Ankita to render “special services”. This, despite the FIR in the case as well as the court’s verdict mentioning that investigation into Ankita’s disappearance had “revealed that the accused (Pulkit) was molesting the deceased in the resort... they (Pulkit and Saurabh) were pressuring her to give extra services to the guest, to which the deceased was not agreeable.”

Also Read: Ankita Bhandari murder case: No action taken against BJP leaders yet, claims her mother

The guilty verdict for Pulkit and his aides, Uttarakhand Congress leaders now insist, “should not shield the role of various BJP leaders and the government in covering up the case, destroying evidence, and exploiting Uttarakhand’s daughter”.

Demand for answers

Former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat, the Congress’s most prominent leader in the hill state, told The Federal that his party “will continue demanding answers from the Dhami government on the role the administration and some BJP leaders had in trying to hush up this case”.

Anupama Rawat, Harish Rawat’s daughter and Congress MLA from Haridwar Rural constituency, which adjoins Bisht’s Yamkeshwar seat, says, “The Ankita Bhandari case puts the entire BJP machinery in the state under suspicion; whether it is the way the government and its police handled the case in the early stages or the mysterious VIP whose identity has not been revealed till date or how Vanantara was bulldozed — all of it makes it clear that the case has not been taken to its logical conclusion. Yes, the men guilty of murdering Uttarakhand’s daughter have been convicted, but that alone should not be treated as closure of the case; people of Uttarakhand, our mothers and daughters deserve to know who this VIP mentioned by Ankita really is and why did the police make no effort to find his identity”.

Safety and dignity of women

Echoing similar views, Uttarakhand Congress chief Karan Mahara adds, “The hospitality industry is one of the biggest employment generators in our state and a large number of resorts and hotels employ women; in light of what happened to Ankita who took up a receptionist’s job to help her family financially, won’t other girls of Uttarakhand wonder if it is safe or not for them to take up such jobs in the hospitality industry... the investigation in the case revealed that Ankita was not just being molested by the son of the hotel owner, who was a prominent BJP leader when the case happened, but she was being forced to give some service to a VIP... what was this service, who is this VIP; should we not ask this from the government. This case is not an ordinary murder case; it is about the safety and dignity of Uttarakhand’s daughters, and the BJP will have to answer why it failed Ankita.”

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Political commentators in the state believe the verdict in the case has reignited both public interest and outrage over the alleged role of the state government in the flip-flops that marred the murder investigation in its early phases. This, they feel, can be leveraged by the Congress which, for the past decade, has been struggling to regain its lost electoral ground in a state increasingly in the throes of religious polarisation due to the policies of the Dhami government.

Dhami govt’s role questioned

“If there is one thing that everyone, secretly even BJP sympathisers, in Uttarakhand is convinced about: it is that the state government tried to scuttle a fair probe in the Ankita Bhandari case because Pulkit Arya’s father had deep connections with the BJP and the RSS. This allows the Congress to launch a strong campaign against the Dhami government. It is also a politically-safe issue for the Congress because there is no religious angle involved in this case — the accused and the deceased are both from the same faith and, more importantly, the deceased was a woman, which brings in an emotive element to the whole incident,” Dehradun-based political commentator Avikal Thapliyal told The Federal.

Opportunity for Congress

“Women have been among the BJP’s most unwavering voters in Uttarakhand since 2014 and if the Congress can convince them that BJP only wants their vote but won’t give them dignity, safety, security, and justice, then the Congress has a solid campaign to build against the BJP,” Thapliyal, founding editor of the popular Avikal Uttarakhand news portal, explained further.

Sources say the Congress is drawing up plans to highlight the various lapses in the murder case and will step up its push for getting “complete justice” for Ankita. The promise of a fresh SIT probe in the case aside, the state Congress also plans to field its women leaders to address press conferences and corner meetings to corner the Dhami government.

Also Read: Rahul Gandhi raises Ankita Bhandari murder; accuses BJP of viewing women as objects

Uttarakhand Congress spokesperson Garima Dasauni says the case “exposes the true face of the BJP when it comes to issues of women... not just in Uttarakhand but everywhere in the country, so many incidents of heinous crimes against women have had a direct or indirect link to the BJP”.

Dasauni adds, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t tire of giving the country lectures on naari shakti (women power) and sindoor while his party colleagues troll women on social media with vile abuses and harass them in public; every second day there is a video or a news item about some BJP member being involved in a case of rape or sexual harassment or molestation or outraging a woman’s modesty. The Ankita case is just one of many such examples of the BJP’s double speak on issues of women and we are going to expose them completely.”