Court finds two guilty for murder of aspiring actress

Mumbai, May 9 (IANS) The Mumbai Sessions Court on Wednesday held guilty two Bollywood junior artistes for the horrific murder of an aspiring actress from Dehradun, Meenakshi Thapa, in 2012.

Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said that after examining all the evidence and witnesses, the court found them guilty for the gruesome killing of the 27-year-old actress in Allahabad.

The court is likely to pronounce the quantum of sentence on Thursday.

According to the prosecution, Amit Kumar Jaiswal, 36, and his girlfriend, Preeti Surin, lured the victim to Allahabad on the pretext of an attracting modeling-cum-acting assignment.

Claiming to hail from a very affluent family, Meenakshi had met the two on the sets of Bollywood director Madhur Bhandarkar's film "Heroine" and expressed her ambitions to make a career in films, after having acted in a horror flick in 2011.

Impressed by her wealthy background, Jaiswal and Surin conspired to make money from her family besides boosting their own career in films, according to the investigation.

After reaching Allahabad, they held Meenakshi hostage and made a ransom demand of Rs 1.50 million from her mother.

However, the Thapa family could send only Rs 60,000 following which the disappointed Jaiswal and Surin decided to eliminate her.

They severed Meenakshi's head in the staff quarters of a hostel where (the accused) Surin's father worked as a watchman.

Subsequently, they chopped her body into small pieces and disposed them off in a septic tank, carried the body in a ST bus for Lucknow where they disposed off the murder weapon.

Then they boarded another bus to Jaunpur and en route threw away the bag containing Meenakshi's severed head in an isolated location.

Before disposing off the body, the accused retained Meenakshi's mobile and bank debit cards, reportedly messaged her mother to deposit the ransom amount in her daughter's bank account failing which they would make a pornographic film and make it public.

On the basis of tracking her SIM card and ATM card, the investigators managed to nab the accused when they reached Mumbai on April 14, nearly a month after killing Meenakshi, and attempted to withdraw money from her account near Bandra.

During the trial, Nikam examined 35 witnesses including prime accused Surin's father, who had last seen Meenakshi with Jaiswal and Surin in Allahabad before she was murdered.