DEHRADUN: A day after the arrest of the three persons, including the son of a senior BJP leader, for allegedly murdering a 19-year-old girl, identified as Ankita Bhandari, the police on Saturday morning recovered her body from Chilla Barrage.
The body was fished out from the barrage by the deep diving team of the Uttarakhand State Disaster Response Force (SDRF). A search was launched out after the main accused and resort owner Pulkit Arya, the son of BJP ex-minister Vinod Arya, told police that he had killed Ankita by pushing her into the barrage from a cliff on September 18 night, the day she had gone missing. The search operation was resumed in the wee hours of Saturday.

Lalita Negi, an SDRF official, said: “Based on Arya’s confession, SDRF’s deep diving team had started the search operation on Friday noon soon after the arrest, but had failed to find the body. On Saturday, it again resumed the search and finally managed to find it from the barrage around 7am.”
“Soon after the recovery of the body, Ankita’s family members were called for identification, and they identified it,” Negi added.

Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, while confirming the development on Saturday, said, “An SIT under DIG P Renuka Devi has been formed to probe the whole incident.”
“Strictest possible action would be taken against all the accused involved in this heinous crime. Arrests of the three accused have already been made and we would ensure that Ankita gets justice,” said Dhami.

Earlier on Friday night, the government had sent a bulldozer to demolish Arya’s resort, where Ankita was working as a receptionist before being killed by him and two others staffers of the resort for refusing to indulge in prostitution with resort guests.
The government also suspended the local patwari and revenue police inspector, who allegedly didn’t register a case on the girl’s disappearance for three days.