THE YOUNGEST accused to be arrested in the ‘fake encounter’ case of Haryana-based gangster Sandeep Gadoli was 18-year-old Divya Pahuja. A model and first-year BCom student, Divya was accompanying Gadoli from Rajasthan to Mumbai, as he and his friends planned to go to Goa. The gangster, meanwhile, was on the run with over 40 cases against him including ten of murder. She was present in the hotel room where Gadoli was shot dead on February 7, 2016 in Mumbai. Her screams heard in the CCTV camera footage was cited as evidence later.

As the Mumbai police probed the genuineness of the encounter, it looked into the role of Divya and examined her social media updates on Facebook. The police said she had been updating her location on the social media app throughout her travel. The police decided to investigate whether it was part of her daily routine as a social media-obsessed teenager or whether it was a ploy and named her an accused. The police claimed that Divya had code words to share information with her mother, Sonia. She was also an accused in the case. There were code words for informing her about whether she had taken medicine, to indicate if Gadoli was present with her and whether he was carrying a firearm. The Mumbai police had claimed that Sonia was promised a flat and money in exchange for information on Gadoli, an allegation denied by both throughout their incarceration and during the trial.

Divya remained behind bars with her mother Sonia from 2016. She was lodged in Byculla women’s jail and her bail applications were rejected five times. Even as Sonia received interim bail during the Covid-19 pandemic, Divya remained in jail. She got bail after seven years on grounds of long incarceration on her sixth attempt in 2023.

After her release on bail, Divya had told The Indian Express that she intended to study law and could not wait for the trial to conclude, so she could go on with her life. The daughter of a fruit vendor father, Divya returned to Gurgaon, making trips to Mumbai to attend the trial. Over five months after her release, Divya was shot dead on January 2, 2024, in a hotel room, allegedly by the owner of the hotel, Abhijeet Singh. Singh allegedly told the police that Divya was blackmailing him by threatening to post his ‘objectionable’ photos and videos on the internet.

As the trial in the Mumbai court was ongoing, the court was informed of her death and the case against her was abated. Her mother Sonia continued to defend her and along with her, her daughter’s innocence in the case. Sonia’s lawyers had relied on the testimony of a Gurgaon police officer, who had said that he had official orders to provide the location of Gadoli to the team tracking him. The lawyers said that this showed that there was no need for the police team to rely on Divya’s social media or her phone calls to track Gadoli. The lawyers also said that there was no proof of the two women having benefited from the alleged passing of information. While the detailed order on Sonia’s acquittal is yet to be made available, the clearing of charges against all the accused means that Divya, too, would have been cleared of the charges had she lived to see the end of the trial.