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Delhi model, lover sentenced to life for murdering wife in chilling love triangle
Model Angel Gupta and boyfriend Manjeet Singh were sentenced to life for conspiracy to murder Singh's wife Sunita in 2018.
A 26-year-old model who made a living acting in films about love, betrayal and murder blurred the line between reel and real when she plotted to kill her boyfriend’s wife in 2018.
Angel Gupta and Manjeet Singh, 38, were among six convicted for the murder of Singh's wife Sunita who was shot dead in October 2018. The couple were sentenced to life in prison for the contract killing, a chilling climax to a love story that began with a chance encounter and unravelled into murder.
A fatal love story
Angel Gupta, born to an Indian father and a British mother, was named Shashiprabha on birth but decided to transform herself into Angel to match her big-screen dreams. According to a Times of India report, after a short stint in low-budget movies, a few item songs and magazine cover features, Mumbai's glamour faded and she moved to Delhi.
This is where she met Manjeet, a property dealer. As she waited outside a club in Gurugram, two men tried to harass her. Manjeet heard her cries for help and arrived as a knight in shining armour to confront the men. In typical Bollywood style, she instantly fell in love with her saviour.
However, she soon discovered that Manjeet was already married to Sunita, a school teacher in Haryana and the couple shared a 16-year-old daughter. But this was not enough to keep them apart. The relationship strained Manjeet's marriage as he moved in and out of home to spend time with his family and Angel.
Ultimately, Angel's father Rajeev, an industrialist, asked him to make a choice -- a life with Angel or going back to Sunita and his daughter, according to TOI. This was when the duo hatched the plan to kill Sunita.
The deadly plan
The couple roped in her Rajeev's driver and asked him to arrange for contract killers. They offered ₹10 lakh for the deed. While Manjeet’s role was to tell the others of his wife’s routine, Rajeev and Deepak did a recce of the roads Sunita took.
The shooters made their first attempt a day before Karva Chauth but missed her as they got busy eating samosas at a stall near her house, the TOI report said. Four days later, they gunned her down in the streets of Bawana.
Cops ruled out robbery as the motive as Sunita's purse with cash and her phone were found near her body. Their first clue came from her diary which they found during the search of the house where she detailed her troubled relationship with her husband and his affair with Angel.
Once confronted about their troubled relationship and contradictory answers, Manjeet broke down and confessed to the crime. On April 29, Delhi's Rohini Court convicted Angel, Manjeet, Rajeev, their driver Deepak and two shooters Vishal and Shehzad for conspiracy and murder of Sunita in 2018, news agency ANI reported. Days later, the couple were sentenced to life imprisonment, bringing an end to their fatal love story.
