Over five months after she was released on bail in connection with the alleged fake encounter of a Haryana-based gangster in a Mumbai hotel room in 2016, 27-year-old model Divya Pahuja was shot dead in a Gurugram hotel on Tuesday, police said.
Pahuja was 18 when arrested by the Mumbai police on July 14, 2016. The police claimed that she had accompanied gangster Sandeep Gadoli to Mumbai and given his rivals and the Haryana police information about his whereabouts through her mother, leading to his killing on February 6, 2016, at a hotel near Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. She was granted bail in June 2023 by the Bombay High Court on the ground that she had spent six years in jail and that the trial will take time to conclude.
A first-year B Com student in Gurugram, Pahuja also worked as a model. During her first court appearance, in July 2016, Pahuja, without any family members around her, looked like a regular teenager, and nothing like the photographs splashed in the media from her modelling portfolio. In the chargesheet filed by the police in September 2016, it was alleged that Pahuja was giving information through code words to her mother Sonia, also arrested in the case.
A transcript part of a 2,000-page chargesheet showed that code language was used to ensure that Gadoli does not suspect her. “Mummy my health is fine. I am going to the doctor. So I will leave this society that you are alone… It is okay, if he is with you then you have to say that mummy, 'If you come here, I will eat'. Is it okay? Yeh do code yaad rakh,” the chargesheet quoted from the transcript.
Pahuja was lodged in Byculla women’s jail from 2016 till her release on bail in 2023.
From being a teenager hooked to social media, Pahuja often spoke about how she felt that life had come to a standstill for her while others her age were moving on. During a hearing in August 2017, Pahuja broke down before the court and said that she was stuck between police and a gangster, and that the jail time was taking a toll on her mental health. She was often admitted to a public hospital for treatment, while she continued trying to get bail. Her bail pleas were rejected five times by various courts till she was finally released in June 2023.
Speaking to The Indian Express after her release, Pahuja said that she had been asked to strip for a search while entering the jail. She said that while authorities ensured she got access to hospital, psychiatrists and counsellors, it was the loss of dignity in jail that affected her most. While in jail, she was often visited by her younger sister, who was in school at the time of the arrest, and her father, who is a man with physical disability, who Pahuja said sold fruits in Haryana.
Pahuja’s fellow inmates in jail included former media executive Indrani Mukerjea. They along with other inmates were part of a protest held in 2017 demanding action against prison officials for allegedly assaulting a convict, who later died. Pahuja also complained of being assaulted by prison officials in 2018 but in 2022, she faced another inmate’s allegations of bullying and running a prison gang.
In January 2023, Pahuja moved an application for a plea bargain stating that she wanted to accept the guilt of having passed on information to police about Gadoli, “in order to save her family as he had threatened to kidnap her father and then minor sister”. A few days later she withdrew the plea stating that she had filed it under duress owing to her state of mind and that the six-year-long jail term had affected her.
After her release, Pahuja said that she was getting used to living outside the jail. “I read a lot of books on law to understand my case better. It has left me interested in the profession. I will enrol to study law soon,” Pahuja said in August 2023. She said that she wanted to ensure that she did not have to return to prison again.
