Take care of mom. My phone will be off. There’s some deal. Aap pareshan mat hona (Don’t worry about me)”.
On the night of September 6, a message from his phone read: “Main theek hoon, meri chinta mat karna, jaldi aaunga (I am fine, don’t worry, I will be back soon)”. The next day, another message said: “Thursday, I will call. Hours later, another said: “I may have to go to Bangalore or Mumbai.
His phone was switched off after that, after which his family started looking for him. We visited the Sarita Vihar police station, then Lajpat Nagar police station. Four days later, Gurugram Police cremated the body as that of an unidentified man after an autopsy, while his family, around 15km away, was still searching for him. The information about Vats led Delhi Police to track her down. “They kept driving around with the body for two days in Gurugram.
On September 11, after he failed to call as promised, they approached Delhi Police. “When there was no message or call after September 8, we started panicking… He had never done this. Manchanda’s body was recovered from a sewer in Gurugram’s Sector 70 on September 10. A team subsequently apprehended Vats and her partner, Sanyam Sachdeva, from a lodge in Kainchi Dham on September 16. A senior Delhi Police officer said the accused allegedly kept Manchanda’s body in Vats’s Creta for two days after killing him before dumping it in the sewer on September 8.
Delhi Police investigators, who asked not to be identified, said the messages were sent by the accused using Manchanda’s phone after killing him. They filed a missing persons’ complaint,” said Manchanda’s sister Karishma. DCP (southeast) Vineet Kumar said Vats’s phone had been switched off, but investigators later detected a new number being used by her and traced her presence to Uttarakhand. Then they left for Uttarakhand,” the officer said.
A flight ticket from Noida to Bengaluru was also shared with the family on September 7.
