Nikki Yadav Died Of Suffocation, No Other Injury; Time Not Clear: Autopsy Report

Nikki Yadav who was strangled by her live-in partner Sahil Gehlot with the cable of a mobile phone in a car between February 9 and 10 died of suffocation, her autopsy report revealed.

The timing of Nikki’s death is not yet clear as the body was kept in a freezer. There were no other injury marks on Nikki apart from the mark on the neck, the report said.

The gruesome killing of Nikki Yadav in a similar fashion in which Shraddha Walkar was killed by Aaftab Poonawala last year came to light on Tuesday. Police will be approaching the case in the same way the Shraddha Walkar murder was taken up.

Nikki’s body was found in a freezer at Sahil’s Dhaba in Najafgarh’s Mitraon village. Sahil strangled Nikki in the car with the mobile cable when the car was near Kashmere Gate and then drove the car for 40-50km making the body sit with the seatbelt on. Sahil kept the body inside the freezer of his eatery and planned to dispose it of later. Hours later, Sahil got married on the same day.

According to police, Nikki and Sahil knew each other since 2018 as they attended the same coaching. They started living together but had to go back to their parents during the pandemic. After the restrictions were lifted, they started living together again. In the Uttam nagar flat, Nikki used to live with her sister but Sahil used to visit.

She had told his neighbours that she was studying and mostly did not talk to the people there but the people present here have seen Sahil coming to her flat several times.

Sahil’s parents did not know about the relationship and fixed his marriage about which Nikki had no idea. On February 9, Nikki got to know that Sahil got engaged and was going to get married the next day. Nikki called Sahil and confronted him. The duo made a plan to elope and accordingly they started on early February 10. They visited many places in Delhi on that night. Their plan was to flee to Himachal but Sahil was in two minds as he started getting calls from the home where the preparations for his wedding were on. The duo started fighting and Sahil strangled Nikki.

The Delhi Commission for Women sought a detailed report on the incident from the police. DCW chief Swati Maliwal tweeted, “Now, a girl named Nikki Yadav was killed by her boyfriend, (he) kept the dead body in a fridge and married someone else the next day. Terrifying, how long will girls continue to die like this.”