After being convicted, Priya Seth confessed to the murder of Dushyant Sharma.
New Delhi:
The 28-year-old Dushyant Sharma was on the top of the world when he matched with Priya Seth on Tinder and the two seemed to have similar interests. After talking on the app for 3 months, the two decided to meet in person. The 27-year-old called him to a rented accommodation, a proposal that Dushyant readily agreed to.
But the relationship, which began in February 2018, had been built on two lies and was doomed from the start. Dushyant, who was married, was posing as a wealthy businessman from Delhi on Tinder with a fake name – Vivan Kohli. Priya, on the other hand, had struck up a conversation only with the aim of kidnapping Dushyant and extorting money.
With the help of two accomplices – Dikshant Kamra and Lakshya Walia – Priya kidnapped Dushyant as soon as he walked into the house.
They realised that the ‘Delhi businessman’ was not as rich as he claimed to be when they made the ransom call. After Dushyant’s family failed to pay Rs 10 lakh, the accused killed him by stabbing him multiple times and smothering him with a pillow.
“We got a call from my son’s phone, and ‘Papa, they will kill me, please give them Rs 10 lakh and save me,” Dushyant’s father Rameshwar Prasad Sharma said during an interview with activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj.
“Priya then snatched the phone and started abusing me. She asked me to deposit Rs 10 lakh in Dushyant’s account. I told her that I don’t have that much money, but could arrange Rs 3 lakh by 4 pm,” he added.
Priya had seized Dushyant’s debit card and forced him to share the pin. After the father deposited Rs 3 lakh, they used the card to withdraw Rs 20,000. Fearing that their crime would come to light, the three accused killed Dushyant.
His body was found on May 4, 2018, stuffed in a suitcase in a village outside Jaipur.
After being convicted, Priya Seth confessed to the crime. Describing her motive behind the crime, she said, “He did not even tell me his real name. he told me he is very rich. I was in a live-in relationship with Dikshant and he had a debt of Rs 21 lakhs. He was looking for someone to get that money from. So we made this plan together to kidnap someone, ask for a ransom, and murder the person.”
Asked by activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj on why they killed Dushyant even though his father transferred the money, she says “We had killed him before the money had come in. First, we tried to strangle him, then smothered him with a pillow, but he survived. Then Dikshant asked me to get a knife, using which he slit his throat.”
A Jaipur court today sentenced the three accused to life imprisonment for the murder of Dushyant Sharma. In his order, Sessions Judge Ajit Kumar Hinger said the prosecution has presented adequate evidence to authenticate facts.
