Thirty years ago, on the night of 2 July, the flames increased from the chimney of a Connaught Place restaurant, which will remove the conscience of the capital for decades by taking smoke of a crime with them. It was late – last closing time – and restaurants, Bagia Barbecue, had already been closed. But someone was still inside, stopping the fire of a oven that hid a terrible secret.
The body of 29 -year -old Naina Sahni lay inside. His partner, Delhi’s Youth Congress chief Sushil Sharma allegedly shot him at home and then tried to settle his body in the restaurant, which she was owned by the part-gaga barback, which was located inside the government-run ITDC Hotel Ashok Yatri Niwas in Connaught Place.
The killing and attempt of Sahni’s body led to a media storm and public shock, which became faster than Sharma’s political stature and crime. The next morning, words like “dissolve,” “seriously,” and “unimaginable” in the headlines. Hindustan Times after that week in an editorial, compared the incident to the plot of a Agatha Christie novel- only cruel.
A series of witnesses
The police timeline will later revive the sequence of anger, nervousness and attempt to hide. Investigators said that Sharma suspected Sahni to have a relationship with his former classmate and fellow party worker, Matlo Karim. That evening, after a warm argument at the house of his temple road, he allegedly shot him in a close range with his licensed revolver.
With her body in her white Maruti 800 boot, Sharma attended the restaurant and called the manager Keshav Kumar. According to the police, Sharma instructed Kumar to remove everyone to make the campus, citing emergency. Later, he allegedly enlisted Kumar’s help in lifting Sahni’s body out of the car and on the restaurant oven – a large soil oven used for centuries in North Indian eateries to roast meat and bread.
The investigation, who was early detained in the investigation, later became the first important link in the series of events, accepted his role and nominated Sharma as a killer.
But the work done by the police in the first place was a minor detail: a smell.
First response, and a doubt confirmed
That night, Constable Abdul Nazir Kunju and Home Guard Chander Pal were patrolling the calm Janapath Lane, when an elderly vegetable seller approached him, blindly excited. Anaro Devi, who had long sold production to Bagia Barbecue, pointed to smoke and flames from the back side of Bagia Barback. Something was not right, he insisted.
First, a security guard outside the campus claimed that there was nothing to worry about. But thick smoke – and a sharp, infallible smell of burning meat – told a different story.
Kunju and Pal extended the boundary wall and entered the premises. Kunju said, “We saw the manager setting fire. He claimed that he was burning the old political banner.”
Kunju said on the phone from Kerala, “The wireless set that I was carrying was not working due to a low battery, so I reached the Windsor Court and used the landline phone of the PWD office to inform the police and fire brigade about the blaze.”
When the fire brigade came, they drowned the flames and prepared to leave – until a body was discovered inside the oven. The remains were partially burnt. The pungent smell, body condition and visible scars of hair and skin shocked the police.
Sub-Abhiyan Rajesh Kumar arrived soon and took the manager Kumar into custody. What started as a regular fire response was suddenly increased in suspected murder.
Overtime
Inspector Niranjan Singh, who took over as the station house officer of Connaught Place, four months ago, was raised from his official quarters in the temple route around midnight. “The duty officer said that there was a woman’s body in a oven. I asked her to repeat it. I could not believe it,” he said.
On the spot, Singh met Kunju, Pal and Devi, and went to the kitchen of the restaurant now. “The body was lying horizontally on the oven. One leg was still inside the mouth of the oven. The face was not on fire. It was real,” he said.
Kumar, under questioning, told how Sharma had reached with the body and insisted that it should be provoked immediately. He also told the police that the body was taken from Sharma’s flat and brought to the restaurant in a small white car boot.
Hours later, the police recovered Sharma’s Maruti 800, left on the Kautilya Marg in Chanakyapuri. The trunk had blood marks.
Clean a house
When the police reached the temple road apartment of Sharma, they found the flat closed. He forced to open the door and found that the floor was washed fresh. There was no body, there was no sign of struggle – except for an extension. A bullet hole in plywood covering the AC unit. The forensic combined the apartment, the pellet spent in the hair-rich strands and a cherry-red diary filled with handwritten notes. One read: “Sushil Sharma loves Naina. Naina loves Sushil Sharma.”
Perera will later describe the scene as “carefully wipe, but with emotional inspection”.
A difficult identity
Although investigators quickly suspected that the sacred remains belonged to Sahni, the official identity proved to be elusive. The police used the records of the address to find their parents – but they surprised the investigators.
Singh said, “His mother was clearly shocked but refused to cooperate.” “We needed confirmation for post -mortem and prosecution.” Perera, who was then Additional Police Commissioner (New Delhi Range), later wrote that the family’s reluctance was “a major source of frustration”.
Finally, on 5 July, the body was identified by Karim, Sahni’s friend and party ally – the same man Sharma accused him of joining him.
Sharma disappears
By the time the investigation gathered, Sharma had disappeared. He spent the murder night at Gujarat Bhavan and then traveled to Jaipur, from where he flew to Chennai. Eventually, he surfaced in Bangalore, where he surrendered to the police on 10 July.
Singh said, “Success came through a tip-off through local media.” But there was a problem. Delhi Police was worried about press coverage, requested that Sharma should not be brought directly to court. Instead, the Karnataka police led the show Singh and his team to the historic ruins near the city court.
“He was calm,” Singh remembered. “He shaved his head, wore a kurta-pajama, and had just returned from Tirupati. There, away from the media, he narrated the entire sequence-how he killed Sahni, brought the body to a restaurant, and tried to destroy all the marks.”
On the night of 10 July, Sharma was brought back to Delhi under heavy security.
In 2003, a city court honored Sharma with a death sentence, called the murder “cruel and predetermined”. The court ruled, “The current one may not be a better case to punish death.”
Restaurant Manager Kumar was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
The Delhi High Court upheld the death sentence in 2007. But in 2013, the Supreme Court appreciated it for life imprisonment, stating that when the act was frightening, there was no decisive evidence that Sharma had cut the body – despite the initial reports.
In 2018, the Delhi High Court ordered his release, citing good jail conduct. By then, Sharma had sentenced a 23 -year jail sentence by then. The court also questioned the argument of the review board of the sentence, given that the argument of cruelty weakened by its conclusions of the apex court.
Sharma was released without pomp and has been kept a low profile since then. He refused to speak for this story.
A city changed and yet the same
The Ashok Passenger was closed in 2003, ITDC Hotel, which was kept in the bagia barback. The restaurant never opened again. Now the one standing on the land acts as a paid parking adjacent to a luxury hotel in Connaught Place. Shopkeepers, dinner and gales use space without knowing the story that once boiled under it.
But some memories refuse to fade.
Anaro Devi, the woman who raised the alarm for the first time, still sits on the same sidewalk, sells vegetables. His hut was recently demolished. She now sleeps under the open sky – her string cot is tied to a pole, a sheet of tarplin is fluttering overhead.
“I don’t remember much. But I remember that smell. That fire,” he said. “I never thought I would be a part of something like this. But I was.”
