CCTV footage shows Delhi woman hours before murder and being stuffed inside dhaba fridge
New Delhi/IBNS: A young Delhi woman, who was strangled by her boyfriend, a dhaba owner, with a charging cable and stuffed inside a fridge, was caught in security camera footage from her home, close to the spot where she was murdered.
The body of Nikki Yadav, 23, was found on Tuesday inside a fridge at a dhaba in southwest Delhi's Najafgarh owned by her boyfriend Sahil Gehlot's family.
According to the police, the woman was killed two-three days ago and her body was kept inside the dhaba's freezer.
Police arrested the owner of the dhaba, Sahil Gahlot, 24. He was in a relationship with the deceased woman, a resident of Delhi's Uttam Nagar.
Gahlot was initially arrested on suspicion, the police told the media.
Nikki Yadav, meanwhile, was last seen in CCTV footage entering her rented home in southwest Delhi. In the video, dated Feb 9, she could be seen alone.
According to the police, Nikki was killed hours later by Sahil, who is a pharma graduate.
Not far from the house, the couple fought inside a car for around three hours over Sahil marrying another woman.
Nikki never knew that her live-in partner was engaged to another woman. She found out a day before his wedding and had threatened to file a case if he married someone else.
Other reports claimed she had booked tickets to Goa and was pressing him to go with her.
As the fight escalated on that very fateful day, Sahil strangled Nikki using a charging cable, the police said.
He allegedly panicked and decided to hide the body in the freezer at his family's dhaba.
"We are looking into the CCTV footage and also scanning for more to collect evidence and establish what happened," a police officer said.
After allegedly strangling Nikki, Sahil went to his parents' home just 700 metres from where he hid her body.
The murder, which surfaced on Valentine's Day, has chilling similarities to the murder of Shraddha Walkar last year by her boyfriend Aaftab Poonawalla, who chopped up the body into several pieces and disposed of them bit by bit, keeping the parts in his fridge for weeks.