‘She wanted to be lawyer’: Father of 16-year-old girl stabbed to death in Delhi's Shahbad Dairy
The crime, which sent shock waves through Delhi, once again underlined women’s safety as a primary concern in the national capital.
A 20-year-old man stabbed a 16-year-old girl at least 16 times, kicked her limp body, and battered her relentlessly with a stone slab in a brutal attack in a narrow lane in northwest Delhi’s Shahbad Dairy on Sunday, even as several passersby did little to intervene, the police said on Monday — a chilling murder that was caught on a surveillance camera and led to widespread outrage across the Capital.
The crime, which sent shock waves through Delhi, once again underlined women’s safety as a primary concern in the national capital, which has seen a series of gruesome murders in less than a year, including the shocking Shraddha Walkar murder last November.
Read: How cops caught Sahil, accused of stabbing girlfriend
The man, Sahil, was arrested from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh hours after the murder, police said, adding that the two were in a relationship for nearly two years, till earlier this month. The girl’s parents, however, said they were unaware of this. The police also underlined that the crime did not have any religious motivation.
Dependra Pathak, Delhi’s special commissioner of police (law and order), said, “Our preliminary enquiry suggests that there is no communal angle in the crime.”
Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal condemned the murder, and said that “criminals have become fearless”, even as the northwest Delhi lawmaker, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Hans Raj Hans termed the incident “unfortunate”. In Delhi, police and public order come under the ambit of the central government, which exercises this authority through the lieutenant governor (LG).
Footage from a CCTV camera installed in the alley captured the heinous attack.
On Sunday evening, at around 8.40pm, the girl was on her way to a friend’s son’s birthday party in Shahbad Dairy’s C Block.
“The man intercepted her as she was leaving a public toilet, where she was getting ready for the party,” said Pathak.
He pushed her against a wall, pulled out what appears to be a knife and stabbed her a total of at least 16 times on her chest, arms, shoulders and head, said the police. HT has reviewed the footage, which the police has confirmed is genuine.
The footage showed the woman trying to fight the man back initially, before collapsing by the side of the alley, at which point he stabs her at least 10 times and kicks her thrice.
Sahil then picked up a concrete slab and throws it at her five times, before walking away. He returned 10 seconds later, threw the concrete slab at her again, kicked the body two more times, and walked away in another direction.
The incident unfolded over at least one-and-a-half minutes, with dozens of people passing through the visibly busy lane, but doing little to step in. No police personnel were present when the crime played out.
The autopsy’s preliminary findings reveal that the girl’s skull had “ruptured after she was attacked by a blunt object”. The police is now awaiting a detailed post-mortem report.
Read: ‘Delhi reached lowest point’: AAP lists crimes against women in capital
The girl lived with her parents and 10-year-old brother, around 300m away from the scene of the crime. Her father works as a mason and her mother is a homemaker.
Her father said the girl wanted to be a lawyer.
“She recently passed her Class 10 board exams. She wanted to be a lawyer and promised to clear her Class 12 exams,” he said.
Sahil, worked as an AC mechanic and hails from Bulandshahr. He lived 3km from the murder spot in northwest Delhi’s Prahladpur, with his father Sarfaraz, mother,and three sisters.
From information they gleaned from the man and girl’s friends and neighbours, the police said the two were in a relationship between June 2021 and earlier this May, said the police, but split up after the girl started meeting another man. Sahil, said the police, was angered by this and on Thursday threatened to kill her if he saw the two together.
The girl’s parents say they were unaware of her relationship with Sahil.
“We hadn’t even heard of any Sahil or Sunny (as he was also known in the neighbourhood),” said her mother, adding that they never received any threats and did not know of her daughter being threatened.
According to her parents, the girl was living with a friend in a nearby colony for the past fortnight or so after her husband was jailed. The girl told her parents that she would return home once her friend’s husband was released “in a couple of days”.
The police were questioning the friend, and HT was unable to get in touch with her for comment.
However, Aarti, a friend of the girl denied Sahil and the girl were ever in a relationship.
“Sahil loved her and followed her around. But she didn’t have anything to do with Sahil,” Aarti said.
Read: ‘Sahil never had fights with anyone’, says landlord of Delhi murder accused
Crimes against women remain a matter of grave concern in the national capital, and the latest incident underscores the need to urgently address this recurrent problem — both at a societal and law-enforcement level — to make the streets safer for all residents, particularly women.
The chilling murder evoked sharp responses from residents and political leaders.
Kejriwal urged the LG to improve the city’s law and order. “A minor girl was brutally murdered in Delhi. This is very sad and unfortunate. The criminals have become fearless, there is no fear of the police. LG sir, law and order is your responsibility, do something,” he tweeted.
Northwest Delhi MP Hans Raj Hans said he was in touch with the police.
“This is an unfortunate and sad incident… I am in touch with the Police, administration and the family members of the victim. Young people often get caught up in emotions. Things turn to love and hate and such things happen,” he said.
National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Rekha Sharma asked for the judiciary to fast-track a case against the suspect.
Speaking to news agency ANI, Sharma said, “It is very shocking and very painful. I saw the video. No one who was near the incident spot came to her rescue.”
The NCW formed a three-member team to look into the matter, she said.
Swati Maliwal, chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, urged the Centre to convene a meeting to address the crime.
“Delhi has become extremely unsafe for women and girls. I appeal to the central government to call a high-level meeting with Union HM (home minister), Delhi LG, DCW chief and Delhi CM,” she said.
Sunday’s murder comes just six months after Aaftab Poonawala’s alleged murder of his girlfriend Shraddha Walkar sent ripples through the country.
Poonawala alleged strangled his 27-year-old girlfriend on May 18, chopped her body into at least 35 pieces over two days, stored them in a refrigerator for about three months, and dumped the parts across Delhi, Gurugram and Faridabad, piece by piece.
Then, this February, the Delhi Police arrested the owner of a roadside eatery for killing his girlfriend near Kashmere Gate on Friday and then driving for over 40km to Najafgarh with the dead body in the front seat to stuff the body in a refrigerator at his dhaba.
The man, Sahil Gehlot allegedly murdered his girlfriend Nikki Yadav at 9am on February 10, got married to another woman roughly 12 hours later, and returned to his vehicle at 3am the following morning to shift the corpse into a refrigerator from the trunk, said the police.