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Regular-article-logo Wednesday, 16 July 2025

For a good life, a dirty death

Divya Pahuja went chasing after stars so hard, she didn’t seem to mind someone falling victim on the way. Velly Thevar tells a heady story of ambition and lust, betrayal and blood   

TT Bureau Published 24.07.16, 12:00 AM
ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF: How Divya posed on her Facebook wall

On February 7, 2016, Divya Pahuja, she of the tribe and generation betrothed to social media and the good life, was just a footnote in a two-state crime saga involving Haryana gangster Sandeep Gadoli's encounter in a Mumbai hotel by cops. That Divya's presence in Sandeep's suburban Mumbai hotel room bed was not incidental, and that she was not just a star witness in the case but a conduit, emerged only three months after the encounter. It turns out, Divya was the honeytrap used by a rival gang and the Haryana Police to lead Sandeep Gadoli into death's lair.

A week before Divya and her mother were arrested - on July 15 - from their Gurgaon flat, Divya turned 21. Over a 100 friends, mostly men, wished her on Facebook.

Divya was quite the Facebook diva, pushing out every second detail of her life on the social media network - celebrations, mall cruising, movie bingeing, what have you. Photographs of herself in natty outfits, striking provocative poses, a shot of her in the company of movie stars (Emraan Hashmi and Prachi Desai), random self-indulgent musings are plastered all over her Facebook page. Lots of information, but no mention of Sandeep. A little more than a month after Sandeep's encounter, on March 25, she posted pictures of herself hugging a man in a police uniform. Then, towards the end of May, after the SIT told the Supreme Court that they had registered an FIR against her, Divya's phone went dead and the Facebook posts ceased.

Looking at Divya's Facebook persona there is no way you can tell her humble background. Her father, Ashok Pahuja is a fruit vendor and mother, Soni, a "Class VIII fail" homemaker, in her husband's words. Soni was probably clued into Divya's secret life, the reason why she too was picked up by the police.

Since his wife and daughter's arrest, Ashok has been flitting between Mumbai and Gurgaon. The family lived their entire lives in rented houses, but lately they had moved into an apartment in Gurgaon. In fact, Tanvir Nizam, Sandeep's family lawyer, says "I have said it in court that Divya Pahuja has purchased a flat of Rs 1 crore in Gurgaon recently and that this needs to be investigated with the fact that this murder was done with a larger conspiracy."

Didn't Ashok object to his daughter's relationship with Sandeep? " Kaun apna jaan khatre mein dalega (Who wants to risk his life?)," he starts to say and then gets defensive. "She did not know Sandeep was a gangster. She thought he was Rishabh." Rishabh was the name under which Sandeep had booked the hotel room that became his death-bed.

Ashok might have been too scared to object to the relationship, but he claims he had pleaded with Divya not to go to Mumbai. Divya, however, was on a different trip. "Dream, Build, Believe, Expand. And don't let someone get you down," she wrote on her Facebook page.

Mumbai police suspect Divya's transformation happened with a lot of compromises. She did some compering at club events and publicised her endorsements on Facebook, but it was not enough to fund her extravagant lifestyle. Sandeep was not a long-time boyfriend either. In fact, both families claim they had only been together a couple of months when the encounter happened, and even then they rarely met.

Divya met Sandeep through Manish Khurana, when she was working in a hotel run by the latter. Sandeep had helped Manish run civic polls in the Gurgaon area against Binder Gujjar, another former gangster.

Unlike Divya, Sandeep came from a well-to-do family. His father was a sub-inspector with the Haryana police and his brothers and sisters are all lawyers and professors. His initiation into the world of violence was pure accident, says Sudesh Kataria, Sandeep's sister.

The year was 2002, and Sandeep was in high school, she recalls. A rivalry between two groups spiralled out of control. The boys in the rival group nursed a grudge against Sandeep and one day when they were out on an archaeological trip to a village close to Gurgaon, they accosted and attacked him. Sandeep was found with 37 knife wounds all over his body. And that's not all - when Sandeep recovered after months of medical care and nursing, he learnt that his elder brother, Naresh Gadoli, a lawyer, had been stabbed and then burnt alive. "His life's trajectory changed for the worse. And then the police made matters worse," laments Sudesh. In 2012, when he returned home after several stints in jail he was a different man, he had given up his mafiosi ways. "That proved to be his undoing. Because he had delinked himself from the mafia, he became vulnerable," says Sudesh.

The reformed Sandeep met Divya sometime end 2015 and was smitten from the word go.

Eight months ago, anonymous notes began to circulate in a Gurgaon court about a possible encounter. Sandeep's family immediately went to the press, but Sudesh admits that they all became a bit lax after that. "There was no reward of Rs 1.5 lakh on him, as reported," she says. Nevertheless, sub-inspector Pradyuman Yadav from the Haryana police kept dropping in at the Gadoli residence. "He told me he would do my brother in. I have video recorded his conversation," she adds.

Sandeep would always celebrate his birthday - February 13 - with his family. But this year when Manish asked him to do a road trip to Mumbai and from there to Goa, he readily agreed. Sandeep, Manish, Manish's assistant Deepak, two Russian girls and Divya reached Mumbai on February 6.

Divya kept on posting her whereabouts on Facebook every few hours. She also posted photographs of milestones from Delhi to Mumbai and even put up the exact GPS location of the hotel.

Meanwhile, the Haryana police was hot on their trail. Soni was also communicating her daughter's whereabouts to ACP Rajesh Gujjar from the Haryana police and to Manoj Gujjar, Binder Gujjar's younger brother, claim police sources.

The rooms were booked in the names of Manish and Rishabh, but interchanged. According to Divya's statement in court, when cops stormed Sandeep's room, she was in the washroom. Sandeep's family, however, is not buying this.

The Mumbai police have found CCTV footage of Pradyuman Yadav killing Sandeep. The footage also shows Sandeep lying in a pool of blood for nearly 20 minutes calling for help, even as six policemen accompanying Pradyuman are seen planting evidence, including a gun on Sandeep to prove exchange of fire. Sandeep's family had originally refused to claim his body until his killers were brought to book. Now, after the arrest of Pradyuman, Divya, Soni, and two other policemen, the family is planning to take his body and cremate him this weekend.

As for Divya, shortly after Sandeep was shot and killed, she went to Goa and - going by Facebook posts - had a good time.

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