A mother who has spent four years asking one question was taken away from India Gate before dawn. Her question has not changed: who was the VIP?
Ankita Bhandari's parents had sat in near India Gate in New Delhi on 14 October. Police detained them in the early hours of 15 October and released them later that morning. Several Congress leaders were detained with them, including Pawan Khera, Supriya Shrinate and Indian Youth Congress chief Uday Bhanu Chib. The parents were released from Tilak Marg Police Station.
The girl from Dobh-Srikot
Ankita Bhandari was born in 2003 in the village of Dobh-Srikot in Pauri, Uttarakhand. At 19 she was working as a receptionist at the Vanantra Resort. She was murdered on 18 September 2022, and her body was recovered from the Chilla Canal on 24 September.
The days after her disappearance still anger people. The room she lived in at the resort was bulldozed on 23 September, a day before her body was found. In the Rishikesh-Badrinath highway protests that followed, villagers blocked the road demanding that her killers be hanged, and her father at first refused to perform her last rites until the final post-mortem report arrived.
Three convicted, one question left
Resort owner Pulkit Arya and two of his employees were sentenced to life imprisonment. Her parents said they would challenge the verdict in the High Court and seek the death penalty.
For the family, the case did not end with the verdict. Reports from the time said she was allegedly killed after resisting attempts to force her to provide "extra services" to a VIP guest. That VIP has never been identified in court. The demand for a CBI probe gathered pace after Urmila Sanawar, the alleged wife of expelled BJP MLA Suresh Rathore, claimed that a "VIP," allegedly a BJP politician, was involved. Viral audio and video clips in late 2025 linked a VIP named "Gattu" to the murder.
Police have rejected the VIP theory. A senior police official said that no evidence or statement about any VIP was presented during the investigation or in court. The Uttarakhand BJP has accused Congress of playing politics over the case.
Even so, the state government moved. On 9 January 2026, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami recommended a CBI inquiry after the parents asked for one. That probe is still open.
The appointment
On 12 October 2026, Dushyant Kumar Gautam was appointed Governor of Sikkim. Gautam is a former national general secretary of the BJP who served as the party's in-charge for Uttarakhand. The family and activists have repeatedly named him as the alleged VIP, and the Uttarakhand Congress has opposed his appointment.
Gautam has denied the allegations and initiated defamation proceedings. The allegations concerning a possible VIP connection remain unproven.
What the parents asked for
The parents did not ask for Gautam's arrest. They asked that his appointment be put on hold until the CBI completes its probe. Ankita's mother said she was not claiming he is guilty, only that allegations exist. Her father gave the Centre 24 hours to cancel the appointment and warned of a nationwide agitation if it did not. The mother had also threatened a hunger strike if they were not allowed to protest.
Why Article 361 matters
The request has a legal logic. Under Article 361 of the Constitution, no criminal proceedings can be started or continued against a Governor in any court while they hold office. Legal experts differ on how far an investigation can go against a sitting Governor, but court proceedings are barred. If the CBI probe produced evidence against someone who then held the office, the law would stand in the way for the length of the term. That is the fear behind the parents' demand. It is a fear about timing, not a finding about anyone's conduct. Opposition parties have gone further, alleging the appointment is meant to protect him. That is a political allegation, not an established fact, and Gautam denies the underlying claims.
The questions that remain
Our view: the immunity argument is the strongest part of the family's case, because it does not depend on proving anything about Gautam. It rests on a simple question. If a CBI probe is still open, why not wait for it to finish before conferring a post that carries constitutional immunity? The Centre has not publicly answered that. We also could not find an official Delhi Police statement explaining the detention at the time of publication, and we will update this report if one is issued.
Four years on, the family has a conviction, a CBI recommendation and an unanswered question. This week they added a night in custody. Whatever the CBI finds, a grieving family asking the government to wait should not be met with a 4 am detention.