Days after a senior Punjab police officer Dalbir Singh Deol, also an Arjuna awardee, was found dead in Jalandhar, police have made a breakthrough in the case with the arrest of the key accused. Police have arrested an autorickshaw driver who shot Mr Deol, Deputy Superintendent of Police, in his head after a heated argument. Mr Deol, who was earlier a weightlifter, was conferred the Arjuna Award in 2000.

The accused, a drug addict, and the officer got into an argument when the latter asked the driver to drop him to his village, police said.

The accused, Vijay Kumar, shot Dalbir Deol from his service pistol which was recovered from his possession, police said. His body bore injury marks and was found lying on a road in Basti Bawa Khel in Jalandhar, where he was posted.

“We found the body of Dalbir Singh Deol on the morning of New Year’s Day under suspicious circumstances. The place where his body was found is 6-7 kilometers from Jalandhar. We have arrested an autorickshaw driver, Vijay Kumar, in the case, “Jalandhar Police Commissioner, Swapan Sharma said.

“The driver refused to drop the police officer to his village which led to a scuffle. Amid the argument, Vijay snatched the service pistol from Mr Deol and fired on his head, leading to his death,” Mr Sharma said, adding that the accused was earlier charged in cases of fighting.

Police officials initially said that it was a hit-and-run case, but arrested the accused on the basis of the CCTV footage.

CCTV footage recovered from the Gurugram hotel where former model Divya Pahuja was shot dead has helped the police piece together the sequence of events on the day of the murder. The footage shows Divya Pahuja at the reception with the hotel owner, Abhijeet Singh – who is the main accused in the case – early in the morning on Tuesday. Less than 20 hours later, her body can be seen dragged down a hotel corridor by two men.

The footage of the body being dragged is, incidentally, the last time it was seen. According to the police, the body was taken to Singh’s BMW, driven somewhere in the direction of Punjab and dumped. The police are yet to locate the body and have launched a massive hunt for it.

Pahuja was in jail for seven years for her alleged role in the fake encounter of her then boyfriend and Gurugram gangster Sandeep Gadoli in 2016. She had been granted bail in June last year.  

Footage from Hotel City Point’s reception, which has a timestamp of 4.18 am on Tuesday, shows Singh, Pahuja and another man walking in. Singh and the other person can be seen speaking to the receptionist while Pahuja stands behind them. After a couple of minutes, Singh and Pahuja walk further into the hotel while the other person says something to the receptionist, before heading in their direction.

The next video, said to be from around 10.45 pm, shows two men dragging Pahuja’s body, wrapped in a blanket, down a corridor of the hotel. One of the men is later seen walking back. Police said the body was carried to a blue BMW owned by Singh and disposed of. 

Blackmail Angle

Sources said Pahuja allegedly had some obscene videos of Singh on her phone which he asked her to delete, but she refused. The former model was allegedly blackmailing the hotel owner with the photos and this led to Singh and at least two of his aides shooting her. Pahuja’s family has vehemently denied this charge.

Singh and two of his alleged accomplices, Omprakash and Hemraj, have been arrested. Police are on the lookout for two or three other aides, who were allegedly paid Rs 10 lakh by Singh to dispose of Pahuja’s body. 

2016 Encounter

Pahuja was the alleged girlfriend of Gurugram’s most-wanted gangster Sandeep Gadoli, who was killed by the Haryana police in an encounter in a Mumbai hotel in 2016. The former model was in the hotel room with Gadoli when he was killed.

Several police officials were later arrested when it was alleged that the encounter was fake. Pahuja and her mother were also taken into custody for allegedly revealing the gangster’s whereabouts and facilitating the “fake encounter”.

Pahuja was in prison since 2016 and had been granted bail by the Bombay High Court in June last year.