18 September 2022.
In Uttarakhand’s Rishikesh, 19-year-old receptionist Ankita Bhandari finishes her shift at the Vanantra Resort and steps out with the resort’s owner Pulkit Arya, the manager Saurabh Bhaskar, and a staff member, Ankit Gupta.
At around half past eight that night, they reach the area near AIIMS Hospital in Rishikesh and stop at a nearby shop to eat and drink something.
From the outside, everything looked completely normal.
But for Ankita—who had started the job at Vanantra Resort barely three weeks earlier—nothing was normal at that moment.
She was terrified inside.
And as soon as she got the chance, she phones her friend Pushp in Jammu.
In a trembling, frightened voice, she says, “I’m badly trapped here.
Anything could happen to me.”
But before Pushp can even understand what’s going on, the call cuts off.
A little while later, Pushp calls her back, but now her phone is coming through as switched off.
He keeps calling Ankita’s number again and again until the next morning, but every time it’s switched off.
When the fear of something terrible began to haunt him, he didn’t waste a second—he rang Ankita’s father and told him everything.
After that, Ankita’s parents reach Rishikesh in a frantic state and try to find her everywhere.
The police initially try to fob it off, but once pressure comes from above, they too begin searching.
Yet from Vanantra Resort all the way to the forests of Cheela, there is no trace of Ankita anywhere.
As the days pass, the mysterious disappearance of a 19-year-old girl sparks outrage across Rishikesh and on social media.
People start asking: if Ankita has gone, then where did she go?
And then, finally, six days after the incident, when the water flow at the Chilla Barrage is stopped and a search operation is carried out, what emerges from that icy water leaves everyone’s blood running cold.
Ankita Bhandari’s body is recovered there, and the entire country is left stunned.
Now everyone wanted to know what had really happened to Ankita Bhandari.
Why—and who—had sent this innocent nineteen-year-old girl to her death just twenty-one days after she started her very first job?
What was the filthy truth hidden inside that lavish Vanantra Resort, a truth so desperate to be buried that bulldozers were sent in overnight to raze the entire place?
And the biggest question of all: who was that VIP who tried to bargain for Ankita’s dignity?
Come, let’s uncover the spine-chilling story of the Ankita Bhandari murder case.
Ankita, born on 11 November 2003 in the village of Dob Srikot in Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal district, grew up in very simple circumstances.
Her family consisted of her father, her mother, and her brother Ajay.
From childhood, Ankita was exceptionally bright in her studies.
Her father, Virendra Singh Bhandari, worked as a security guard, and even then it was only just enough for the family of four to get by.
Yet despite the hardship, Ankita’s eyes were always filled with big dreams.
Life in the hills is difficult anyway—whether it’s water or education, people often have to walk miles.
Ankita could see the worry etched on her parents’ faces, and she would always think that one day, by studying and building a life, she would pull her family out of this trap of poverty.
In 2020, Ankita performed very well in her Year 12 exams, scoring 89%.
Achieving such marks despite limited resources was the biggest proof of her hard work.
She dreamed of building a career in hotel management, so after Year 12 she took admission for a certificate course at Shriram Institute of Hotel Management in Dehradun, and began living at a relative’s house there.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a nationwide lockdown, Ankita’s father lost his job as a security guard.
Ankita still had to pay another ₹35,000 to complete her course, but with her father out of work the family fell into severe financial difficulty.
Because of this, after only six months of study, in March 2022 Ankita had to return to her village—heartbroken—leaving her college and her dreams unfinished.
Even then, Ankita didn’t want to sit at home and give up.
She wanted to find a job and support her family, so she began searching online.
Around this time, through social media she became friends with a boy from Jammu named Pushpdeep.
Their friendship grew so strong that when Pushp learnt about Ankita’s poor financial situation, he too started looking online for job adverts for her.
During this search, Pushp came across an advert on OLX for the Vanantra Resort.
It clearly stated that the resort needed a female receptionist who could stay on-site.
The resort was located about ten to twelve kilometres from Rishikesh, in the dense forested area of Ganga Bhogpur Talla.
So the two of them assumed that, considering safety and working hours, the resort must be looking for someone who could live there.
Pushp contacted the number given in the advert—it belonged to the resort’s owner, Pulkit Arya.
Pulkit Arya was no ordinary man; he was the son of Vinod Arya, a former minister from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand.
Using political influence and immense wealth, Pulkit had built this extremely luxurious resort called Vanantra right in the middle of the forest.
As grand and beautiful as the resort looked from the outside, the truth inside it was just as terrifying.
Powerful politicians, VIP guests, strongmen and wealthy people often came there for pool parties, debauchery and illegal activities.
And because it belonged to a former minister’s son, the local administration would simply turn a blind eye to what went on there.
But neither Pushp nor Ankita knew any of this.
Ankita was desperate to support her family financially, so she agreed to stay inside the resort for the job.
Pulkit then conducted Ankita’s online interview and hired her on a salary of ₹10,000 a month.
Ankita was meant to join from 1 September, but before that she wanted to reach the resort and understand how everything worked.
So on 28 August 2022, Ankita’s father himself came to drop his beloved daughter at Vanantra Resort.
He stayed there until the afternoon, appealing to Pulkit to take care of his daughter’s safety.
He also asked whether any other female employee stayed there at night.
Pulkit told him not to worry—although there was no other female employee at the resort, there was an Ayurvedic candy factory nearby where women also worked.
Trusting Pulkit’s words, Ankita’s father left his daughter there and returned to the village.
Ankita then began work as a receptionist from 1 September 2022.
But she had no idea she had stepped into a trap from which every exit was closed.
Ankita noticed that influential and powerful people frequently came and went at the resort, and during these visits different girls were also brought in.
The girls would arrive, drink, smoke flavoured hookah, while Pulkit and his powerful friends lounged around indulging themselves.
Ankita assumed this was normal there, ignored it, and carried on with her work.
But soon, Ankita came face to face with a bitter, filthy reality she had never even imagined in her life.
One night, some guests—drunk out of their minds—misbehaved with Ankita as she stood alone at reception.
Terrified, Ankita complained to the owner, Pulkit.
Pulkit didn’t say much to the guest, but under the pretext of “safety” he changed Ankita’s room and shifted her to a room next to his.
In Pulkit’s room lived the resort manager, Saurabh Bhaskar, and a staff member, Ankit Gupta—both of whom were also his friends.
But Pulkit hadn’t moved Ankita near his room for her safety; his intentions were rotten.
He had his eye on her.
And not just him—his friend and resort manager Saurabh Bhaskar also looked at her with dirty intentions.
During this period, Ankita’s room was changed repeatedly to harass her—sometimes Pulkit would shift her near his room, and sometimes back to her earlier room.
The constant shifting began to anger Ankita.
But things crossed every limit when, just ten days after she joined, on the night of 11 September, Pulkit Arya tried to kiss her.
Ankita was stunned by his shamelessness.
In anger, she even slapped her debauched boss, Pulkit Arya.
Pulkit calmed her down, saying he would never make such a mistake again.
But it didn’t end there.
Apart from Pulkit, on one or two occasions the resort manager Saurabh Bhaskar also molested Ankita.
So far from home and all alone, Ankita was deeply frightened to find such predatory people around her.
She spoke on the phone almost daily with her family and with her friend Pushpdeep in Jammu.
She didn’t tell her parents anything, and kept pretending everything was fine.
But one night, crying, she told Pushp the entire situation.
By now Ankita fully understood what kind of hell this was, and she thought many times about quitting.
But the poverty was such that the moment she even considered leaving this miserable ₹10,000 job, the faces of her poor parents would appear before her eyes—and somehow she would convince herself to keep going.
Pushp knew very well about Ankita’s mental and emotional breakdown.
So on 14 September 2022, he travelled from Jammu to Vanantra Resort himself, just so Ankita could feel a little better.
He stayed there for about two days, comforted her, and then left for Jammu again on 16 September.
Neither of them had any idea that what was about to happen next was beyond anything they could have imagined—even in their dreams.
They didn’t know this would be their last meeting.
On the evening of 17 September, Ankita, her mother, and her brother Ajay—who lived in Delhi—spoke at length on a conference call for a full thirty-four minutes.
The whole family was together on the phone, laughing and chatting.
But the terrifying storm raging inside Ankita—she didn’t let her mother or brother sense it at all.
She didn’t want her family to worry because of her.
She was fighting that environment alone, swallowing her tears and pretending on the call that everything was normal.
Meanwhile, Pushp had reached Jammu.
As soon as he got home, Ankita once again sent him several WhatsApp messages that night.
This time, her fear was at its peak.
She wrote that she was feeling extremely insecure at the resort now, and she wanted to quit the job.
When Pushp asked why, Ankita wrote further: last night, staff member Ankit Gupta came to me.
He told me that on Monday—19 September—a VIP guest is coming to the resort, and you will have to provide them “extra service”.
When Ankita, shocked, asked what that meant—and why she should do such a thing?
So Ankit said, shamelessly, “Don’t act like some village bumpkin.
If you give them ‘extra service’, you’ll get an extra ten thousand rupees.”
Hearing this disgusting remark, Ankita’s blood boiled.
She shouted, “Just because I’m poor, does that mean I’ll sell myself for ten thousand rupees?
Do you lot want to turn me into a prostitute?”
Pushp was stunned by everything he heard.
He understood that the place was not fit for Ankita to live in.
Ankita also told Pushp that she didn’t want to do this job anymore, and that, no matter what, she had to get out of there as soon as possible.
Pushp reassured her that he would find her another job, and the two of them ended the conversation there and went to sleep.
But the next day began with an even bigger storm in Ankita Bhandari’s life.
From the morning of 18th September itself, the resort owner, Pulkit Arya, started threatening her again and again: if she didn’t provide “special service” to his VIP guest, she would be thrown out of the job, and another girl would be hired in her place—someone who was willing to do it.
Pulkit even beat Ankita and told her that if she didn’t agree, the consequences would be very bad.
But Ankita was absolutely not prepared to sell her dignity.
When she felt Pulkit was crossing every limit, she decided right then and there to leave the resort.
She immediately packed all her belongings and called a resort employee, Karan, crying, “Please, take my bag up to the main road.
I can’t stay here for even a second.
Please take my bag up.
Turn the vehicle around—come down, come down.”
Ankita’s voice was trembling with fear.
As Ankita was saying all this to Karan, Pulkit Arya arrived there like a predator.
He clamped a hand over Ankita’s mouth, snatched her mobile, and dragged her by the hair, forcing her back into the room.
Sounds of crying could be heard from inside Ankita’s room.
A little while later, Pulkit’s friend Ankit Gupta walked into Ankita’s room, dancing, shamelessly, and began making strange, disgusting gestures in front of her.
For nearly an hour, they kept tormenting Ankita.
But Pulkit and his companions had now realised that Ankita would not join their dark racket—and that, later on, she could expose all of them outside.
So they decided to remove her from their path.
A few hours later, in the evening, they went to Ankita and, on the pretext of work, told her to come out with them.
Even though she didn’t want to, she was forced to agree.
At around 8 p.m., Pulkit Arya, Saurabh Bhaskar, and Ankit Gupta left the resort with Ankita, on a motorcycle and a scooter.
At around 8:30 p.m., they reached near AIIMS Rishikesh and ate momos somewhere nearby.
There, spotting an opportunity, Ankita called Pushp once again.
In a very subdued, frightened voice, she told him she had come out with Pulkit, Ankit, and Saurabh.
Since all three were standing very close to her, Ankita couldn’t speak openly.
They spoke for about 18 minutes and 55 seconds.
Out of fear, Ankita neither told him where she was, nor gave any other details.
But Pushp began to suspect that something was seriously wrong.
In the end, in an extremely low voice, Ankita said to Pushp, “I’m badly trapped between them.
They can do something major to me.
They can’t be trusted.”
Pushp shouted, “Keep the phone on—don’t cut it.”
But just then, a voice came from behind, and the call got disconnected.
That was the last time anyone spoke to Ankita.
Because what was about to happen next was beyond anyone’s imagination.
Pulkit, Ankit, and Saurabh started heading towards Chilla Barrage with Ankita.
At 9 p.m., at the check post at Chilla Barrage, Forest Department guard Ashish Purohit saw three boys heading towards the barrage with a girl.
He stopped them and asked, “Where are you going at this hour of the night?”
Hearing this, Pulkit panics for a moment, but the very next second he puts on a sly smile and lies, saying they’re from the nearby village of Kodia and are heading back home.
The guard, convinced, lets them go.
They drive on and stop their vehicles on a deserted, pitch-dark stretch along the Chilla canal.
Ankita can’t understand what they’re about to do.
Meanwhile, yet again, a fierce argument breaks out between Ankita and Pulkit over providing “extra service” to the VIP guest.
But when Ankita once again refuses to agree, an enraged Pulkit and his two companions assault that lone, innocent nineteen-year-old girl and shove her into the deep, fast-flowing waters of the Chilla canal.
After falling in, Ankita thrashes about to save herself, screaming for help, but those stone-hearted monsters show not the slightest mercy.
Within minutes, Ankita’s breathing stops forever, and her body is swept away in the canal’s icy water.
The girl who had come with big dreams, to work and shoulder her family’s responsibilities, couldn’t even complete twenty days at the job—she became a victim of sheer brutality.
After committing the crime, the three killers begin writing a disgusting script to erase the evidence.
At 9:30 that night, Pulkit himself phones Ankita’s friend Pushp and says, “Ankita worked well for the first week, but after that she hasn’t been working properly and stays on her phone all day.
Tell her to find another job.
We need an extraordinary candidate.”
Pushp already wanted Ankita out of that resort as soon as possible.
So he says, “Fine—just pay her twenty days’ salary, and in the morning I’ll send someone to collect it.”
After that, when Pushp tries calling Ankita to inform her, her phone is switched off.
Even after calling again and again, the call doesn’t go through, so he rings Pulkit—but Pulkit now stops answering too.
After three calls, Pulkit switches his own phone off as well.
Then Pulkit and his friends return to the resort and order the chef to prepare food for four people—when only three people were actually there to eat.
Ankit Gupta deliberately puts on an act in front of the staff, saying he’s going to deliver food to Ankita’s room, so later they can “prove” that Ankita returned to the resort alive.
On the morning of 19 September, Pushp again tries to contact Ankita, but her phone is still off.
After repeated attempts, when he finally gets through to Pulkit, Pulkit tells him, “Ankita has been missing from the resort since morning.
She was here at night, but since morning there’s no trace of her.”
The moment Pushp hears this, the ground seems to slip from beneath his feet.
Then Pulkit starts accusing Pushp himself: “What if you’re the one who took her away?”
By now, Pushp’s suspicion has turned into certainty—that they have done something terribly wrong to Ankita.
Somehow, he finds Ankita’s father Virendra Singh’s number and calls him, saying Ankita’s phone hasn’t been reachable since last night, and the resort staff are claiming she’s been missing since this morning.
Hearing this, Ankita’s family is shattered.
Virendra Singh first goes to the Pauri police station to file a missing person report, but the police brush him off, saying it isn’t their area and he should go to Muni Ki Reti police station.
When he reaches Muni Ki Reti, he’s sent to Rishikesh Kotwali.
From Rishikesh Kotwali, he’s sent to Laxman Jhula police station, and the Laxman Jhula police finally tell him to go to the Chilla Patwari outpost—but even there, his report isn’t registered.
A helpless father is running from station to station in the middle of the night, trying to file a report for his missing daughter.
But no policeman is willing to touch the case—because the resort owner is the son of an influential politician.
When, on the morning of 20 September, Virendra Singh reaches the Karnkhal Patwari outpost, he learns that the killer Pulkit Arya has already been there and submitted a written complaint claiming Ankita was depressed and had disappeared on her own.
It’s important to understand here that Uttarakhand’s policing system is quite different from many other states.
In large parts of Uttarakhand, the old “revenue police” system—running since the British era—is still in place.
Because villages are scattered and crime is relatively low, the administration has assigned thousands of villages and areas to revenue officials.
Meaning, the work that regular police do elsewhere is done in Uttarakhand not only by the police, but also by revenue inspectors and patwaris.
And because of this unusual system, there were major hurdles at the very start of Ankita Bhandari’s case.
After being turned away again and again, at around 11:30 a.m.
On 20 September, when Ankita’s father Virendra Singh reaches the office of Patwari Vivek Kumar, he is made to wait outside for nearly three and a half hours.
When he finally forces his way in by pulling aside the curtain, he sees the patwari sitting inside in a meeting with the accused Pulkit Arya, Pulkit’s minister father Vinod Arya, Pulkit’s wife Swati, and other accused individuals.
Patwari Vivek Kumar flatly refuses to register Virendra Singh’s report and says, “When Pulkit has already filed a report, what’s the need for a second one?”
Once Ankita’s father realised the local revenue police had been completely bought off, he somehow sought help from the Speaker of the Uttarakhand Assembly, Ritu Khanduri.
Four full days after the incident—on 22 September 2022—the case was finally handed over to the regular police, and an official FIR was registered at the Laxman Jhula police station.
After that, SSI Manohar Singh Rawat from the regular police raided the Vanantra Resort and recorded statements from the staff.
He found that all the CCTV wires there had been cut—making it clear how Pulkit Arya had tried to destroy the evidence.
During this time, Ankita’s friend Pushp turned out to be the biggest help in the case.
He posted his WhatsApp chats with Ankita on social media—older messages in which she had clearly written how Pulkit Arya harassed her and was forcing her to provide “special service” to a VIP guest.
Pushp also gave the media call recordings from the 19th, in which Pulkit kept dodging the issue and speaking evasively.
Based on Pushp’s final WhatsApp chats with Ankita, the resort employees’ statements, and CCTV footage found near AIIMS Rishikesh, the police arrested Pulkit Arya, Saurabh Bhaskar, and Ankit Gupta on the night of 23 September.
By then, the case had already exploded on social media, and there was intense public anger.
So when the police were taking the three accused away after arresting them, an enraged crowd stopped the police vehicle and beat all three severely.
The matter had become so heated nationwide that the BJP government in Uttarakhand was facing massive embarrassment.
Because of this, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had to order the formation of a Special Investigation Team, after which the investigation sped up further.
Under strict interrogation, Pulkit and his friends initially kept trying to twist and deflect the story.
But when the police put all the witnesses and evidence in front of them, all three finally broke.
They admitted they had killed Ankita Bhandari, and that her body would be found in the Cheela canal.
Then, on the morning of 24 September, the water at the Cheela Barrage was stopped and a search operation was carried out.
Ankita Bhandari’s body was recovered, caught in the barrage gate.
On 24 September itself, Ankita’s post-mortem was completed at AIIMS Rishikesh.
It clearly showed she had been pushed into the canal while still alive.
There were signs of ante-mortem injuries—injuries sustained before death.
The report also said there was no clear evidence of forceful penetrative sexual assault, but the possibility of rape could not be completely ruled out.
Even so, the Uttarakhand Police never investigated the case from the angle of sexual assault.
If they had, and if sexual abuse had also come to light, the accused could have faced even harsher punishment.
But throughout this period, a lot was happening that made it look as though the government simply wanted to bury the issue as quickly as possible—even at the cost of basic humanity.
Before Ankita’s body was found, on the night of 23 September, a bulldozer was sent into the Vanantra Resort on the orders of BJP MLA Renu Bisht—burying crucial evidence under rubble.
Not only that, a mysterious fire broke out at Pulkit Arya’s family’s Ayurvedic candy factory near the resort.
Later it emerged that it was on the orders of Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami that Renu Bisht had the resort demolished.
The opposition and many others directly alleged that all this was being done so that the name of that VIP man would not come out—the very person for whom Ankita Bhandari was being pressured to provide “extra service”.
Public anger only grew.
Across the country, media headlines were dominated by this case.
People took to the streets with candle marches and protests demanding justice for Ankita.
Under pressure from the public and opposition parties, the BJP—trying to protect itself—was forced to expel Pulkit’s father Vinod Arya and his brother Ankit Arya from the party.
The pressure was so intense that the Uttarakhand Police and the government rushed Ankita’s last rites.
It was even alleged that CM Pushkar Singh Dhami himself pressured Virendra Singh Bhandari to perform the cremation quickly.
And then came the limit: when Ankita was cremated, her mother was not even allowed to see her one last time.
As compensation, the government gave Ankita’s family twenty-five lakh rupees.
Meanwhile, public protests were demanding one crore rupees and a government job.
But even that money could never heal the wounds Pulkit Arya had inflicted on that family.
After nearly two years and eight months, the SIT’s 500-page charge sheet, statements from 100 witnesses, and around 30 documentary pieces of evidence made the killers’ lies collapse like a house of cards.
Finally, on 30 May 2025, in a historic verdict, Judge Reena Negi of Uttarakhand’s fast-track court found Pulkit Arya, Saurabh Bhaskar, and Ankit Gupta guilty of Ankita Bhandari’s murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
However, Ankita’s parents and the public had demanded that those who ended their daughter’s life should not have the right to live either—and that they should be hanged.
But the court upheld life imprisonment.
The court has sent all three killers behind bars—but is the justice Ankita Bhandari received truly complete?
Did this verdict really expose all those forces that were the real reason behind the entire scandal?
Even today, in the Ankita Bhandari murder case, many questions stand before the country’s justice system.
The root of this whole incident was that “VIP” for whom Ankita was being pressured to bargain away her dignity.
So who exactly was that VIP—whose name was protected at the cost of drowning a nineteen-year-old girl in a canal?
At times, the name of Uttarakhand BJP’s organisation general secretary Ajay Kumar surfaced; at other times, BJP National General Secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam was mentioned.
But nothing has been proven so far.
The outrage, however, truly erupted when, in October 2026, Dushyant Kumar Gautam was appointed Governor of Sikkim—someone whom Ankita’s parents had accused of being the VIP in Ankita’s case.
In protest, Ankita’s parents sat on a demonstration in front of India Gate.
Since the case had been handed over to the CBI in February 2026, Ankita’s parents want that, until the CBI investigation is complete, Dushyant Kumar should not be given any major post.
Now we will have to see who that VIP really was—whether the veil is ever lifted, or whether the justice for a girl who only wanted to become a support for her ageing parents will remain incomplete.
