LUCKNOW Returning quietly from Nepal on October 16 while police still believed she was abroad, model Shraddha Dubey kept ahead of investigators for four days through calculated moves and deception. Travelling across Uttar Pradesh with her sister and driver, the main accused in cafe owner Shiva Sharma’s death used an alias at an Agra hotel, slipped into Lucknow to sign anticipatory bail papers and ditched a slow cab in Kanpur during a cross-country dash that eventually ended with her arrest in Nagpur.
Over the next few days, the trio allegedly travelled through Rae Bareli, Agra, Lucknow and Kanpur before taking a route through Fatehpur and Satna in Madhya Pradesh to reach Nagpur. The three were subsequently produced before a court, which granted Uttar Pradesh police transit remand to bring them to the state for further investigation. An investigation timeline and route plan, based on inputs given by the influencer to interrogation officers on Thursday at Hazratganj police station, suggested that Dubey, her sister Rashmi and their driver Danish spent around six days in Nepal before returning to India on October 16. On October 16, Lucknow police commissioner Tarun Gauba told media persons that Dubey’s last known location had been traced to Nepal and that the police were coordinating with Nepal police. Dubey was arrested in Nagpur on October 20 along with her sister and their driver. OCT 20 | ARRESTED: UP police arrested Shraddha, her sister and their driver
A day later, the then DCP (Central) Vikrant Vir said the police were in coordination with their Nepal counterparts.
However, according to the investigation timeline shared by a senior officer to HT, Dubey had reached Rae Bareli on October 16, before moving on to Agra the following day.
OCT 16 RAE BARELI: Returned to UP, according to the investigation timeline The route allegedly taken by the accused from the Nepal border back into Uttar Pradesh, followed by a journey across central India to Nagpur is now a key part of the investigation into how the group moved between locations before its arrest.
