Four years have gone by since Ankita Bhandari’s body was pulled out of the Chilla canal near Rishikesh, and her parents still feel the full truth hasn’t come out.
Ankita was just 19. She had finished Class 12 and taken a receptionist job at Vanantra Resort in Yamkeshwar to help the family. Salary was around ten thousand a month. She started end of August 2022. On the night of 18 September she vanished. Six days later they found her body in the canal.
Police and the court later said three men did it — Pulkit Arya, the resort owner and son of a former BJP leader, and two of his staff, Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta. The story that came out in court was that Ankita was being pushed to give “extra services” to guests. She said no. Messages she sent friends and what some staff later told the police showed she was scared and wanted out. That night the three men took her away and pushed her into the canal. In May 2025 a court in Kotdwar gave all three life sentences. They’re still in jail. Bail has been rejected again and again.
That part is closed in the courts. But Ankita’s father Virendra and mother Soni keep saying something bigger was never properly looked into.
Right from the start there was talk of a “VIP” guest for whom those extra services were demanded. The state SIT said they found no clear proof that any big person was involved in the actual murder. The chargesheet didn’t name anyone else. Still the talk never died. Late last year a woman who said she was the second wife of a former BJP MLA put out videos and an audio clip. In that clip, she claimed, the name of senior BJP leader Dushyant Kumar Gautam came up. Gautam has denied everything and filed defamation cases. The Delhi High Court even ordered some posts linking him to the case to be taken down.
Ankita’s parents never accepted that the VIP angle was fully checked. In January this year, after more protests, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami recommended a CBI inquiry. The government keeps pointing out how fast they acted — arrests within days, an SIT, a thick chargesheet, 25 lakh given to the family, jobs for the father and brother. The parents still want the CBI to dig specifically into whether anyone higher up was involved, and they want that finished before any more rewards are given out.
That’s why Dushyant Gautam’s appointment as Governor of Sikkim this week hit them so hard. On 14 October they started a sit-in near India Gate. They appealed to President Murmu to hold the appointment until the CBI finishes its work. That evening Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi came and sat with them. Rahul later wrote that four years on the family still has no justice while a “VIP” accused has got protection and a constitutional post. Other Congress people stayed the night. Early next morning police detained the parents and some leaders; they were released around 5 am. The father then gave the government 24 hours to cancel the appointment or face bigger protests.
The Uttarakhand government says it has done everything the law required and the life sentences show how seriously they took the case. The CBI probe into the alleged VIP angle is still going on. Nothing public has come out naming anyone else.
For Ankita’s parents the three life sentences were never enough. They keep saying their daughter was pressured, she refused, and she paid with her life — and the person for whom that pressure was applied has never been made to answer. That’s the gap they’re still trying to close, and that’s why a Leader of the Opposition sat with them on the pavement at India Gate this week.
Sources: Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, News18, Outlook, ANI, Kotdwar court judgment May 2025, Uttarakhand government statements, and reports from the 14-15 October India Gate protest.
@Rohit Manral
