A Mumbai sessions court has ruled that model Divya Pahuja, who was shot dead in January 2024, was not proved to have helped policemen track and kill Haryana gangster Sandeep Gadoli in what was alleged to have been a fake encounter in 2016.

The finding comes in a detailed 542-page judgment, made available on Wednesday, in which five policemen and two others, including Divya’s mother, Sonia, were acquitted on March 27 of charges of murder and criminal conspiracy. Though the case against Divya herself was abated after her death, the court addressed the accusations against her directly and found them unproven.

What the police had claimed

Divya was Gadoli’s alleged girlfriend. When the wanted gangster, who was on the run and wanted in over 40 cases including ten of murder, was shot dead by police in a Mumbai hotel room on February 7, 2016, investigators claimed she had helped set him up. She was said to have fed his location to the accused cops through phone calls with her mother, using pre-decided code words including “medicine” and “food” to indicate whether Gadoli was with her or not.

She was initially treated as a witness but was later arrested. She was 18 at the time of the encounter. Divya was released in this case in mid-2023. Five months later, in January 2024, she was shot dead in a separate case unconnected to this one.

The police chargesheet also claimed Divya and Sonia had, in a call the day before the encounter, discussed being given a flat in exchange for information by wanted accused Manoj Gujjar, who is the brother of Gadoli’s rival gangster Virendra Kumar alias Binder Gujjar, at whose behest the police alleged the crime was planned. Screenshots of Divya’s Facebook profile and WhatsApp chats were submitted as evidence, along with transcripts and recordings of the phone calls.

Why the court threw it out

The court relied on the testimony of a Haryana police official who said he had been placed on official duty specifically to intercept phone calls and track Gadoli’s movements as he travelled from Rajasthan to Goa via Mumbai.

That testimony, the court said, showed that Divya’s calls were already being intercepted and her location was being relayed to sub-inspector Pradyuman Yadav, who fired the fatal shot.

“(This) reasonably nullifies the accusations of the prosecution that accused No. 1 (Yadav) was illegally getting the location and information of the victim Sandip from accused Nos. 4 and 5 (Divya and Sonia Pahuja) under a conspiracy,” additional sessions judge Prashant C. Kale wrote.

The social media screenshots were not proved in court because proper procedure had not been followed during their seizure. The phone call transcripts and recordings similarly failed on procedural grounds.

The bigger case

The acquittals on March 27 came after a prolonged trial in which the prosecution’s case had rested on multiple pillars — ballistic evidence, call data records between the policemen and Manoj Gujjar, and CCTV footage that the SIT claimed showed two policemen standing at Gadoli’s hotel room door, not aiding him as he writhed in pain for nearly 20 minutes after being shot, planting a weapon on him, and destroying cameras. The court found none of the charges proved.

Yadav, who had been in jail since his arrest in July 2016 (nearly ten years) was among those acquitted. The case had also seen the state government remove special public prosecutor Amin Solkar near the end of the trial without giving any reason.