Monday (May 29), the country woke up to the shocking news of the brutal murder of a minor girl identified as Sakshi by her ‘friend’ Sahil in the Shahbad dairy area of Delhi. In the murder, which has been caught on CCTV camera, Sakshi was stabbed over 20 times and then her head was crushed using a boulder by Sahil. Her parents had said that Sakshi was stabbed so many times by Sahil that her intestines were bulging out of her body.
Delhi police have arrested the accused, Sahil in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district.
In the picture of his arrest shared by ANI, Sahil, who stabbed Sakshi over 20 times and brutally murdered her, was seen wearing a Kalava (a sacred Hindu thread) on his wrist. Sakshi and Sahil were reportedly in a relationship and had an ugly fight a day before the murder. The victim was on her way to attend a birthday party of her friend’s son when Sahil stopped her and started attacking her with a knife. In the brutal attack, Sahil kept stabbing the victim repeatedly and later picked up a concrete block to crush her head.
Interestingly, Sakshi’s friend has now revealed that Sakshi believed Sahil was a Hindu.
Now, another CCTV footage has emerged, uploaded by ANI, that shows Sahil lurking at the very spot where he murdered Sakshi before the murder was committed.
#WATCH | Delhi | CCTV visuals show accused Sahil in the Shahbad Dairy area, before he murdered the 16-year-old girl, on 28th May.
— ANI (@ANI) May 30, 2023
(Video: CCTV visuals confirmed by Police) pic.twitter.com/VAmr0EikXu
In the video uploaded by ANI, one can see Sahil talking to a friend and waving his hands about. After his conversation, Sahil is seen leaving the area. This footage is from before Sahil murdered Sakshi in the same spot where he is seen in the video.
If one examines the video closely, it seems that Sahil was not wearing a Kalava in this video, which is CCTV footage of moments before the murder took place.
Here are some stills from the video (This is a slideshow, please click next to view all images):
While the CCTV footage is certainly not crystal clear and it is extremely dark in the video, from all the images and angles of the video footage, there are indications that Sahil was not wearing a Kalava moments before murdering Sakshi.
From the timestamps of the two video footages uploaded by ANI, it is evident that there were only a minute before Sahil proceeds to murder Sakshi, therefore, it is unlikely that he left from this area, wore a Kalava and then murdered Sakshi.
While this video footage indicates that Sahil was not wearing a Kalava while murdering Sakshi, the picture of Sahil’s arrest prominently shows that he is wearing one on his wrist.
Sahil was arrested on the 29th and the murder took place on 28th, therefore, he clearly had enough time to wear a Kalava in the meantime.
Now, the argument that can be made is that Sahil always wore a Kalava and maybe removed it while murdering Sakshi. To confirm, we checked Sahil Instagram profile for the images and reels he had uploaded of himself.
We found 2-3 images where he was indeed wearing a Kalava.
However, there were only these images where he seem to be wearing a Kalava. Most of his images were where he was not wearing one.
It is, therefore, evident that Sahil only wore a Kalava rarely and mostly when he was in a group of friends.
This gives rise to several questions and theories.
The most obvious question is – why did he wear a Kalava after murdering Sakshi?
There are a couple of theories that could explain the move. First and foremost could be to evade the police by misrepresenting his identity. After he murdered Sakshi, it was obvious that he would be identified and his family spoken to. It would be revealed that he was a Muslim man whose name of Sahil Sarfaraz. Therefore, he could have thought that wearing a Kalava would hide his identity, portray him as a Hindu and therefore, he would be able to evade arrest.
That, however, would not explain why he wore a Kalava sometimes even earlier, as evidenced by his Instagram pictures.
It is pertinent to remember that Sakshi’s friend testified on camera that Sakshi believed that Sahil was actually a Hindu. It is entirely possible that Sahil used to wear a Kalava when he would be out with friends, including Sakshi, to misrepresent his identity and pretend to be a Hindu. Given that there are hundreds of cases where Muslim men trap Hindu girls by pretending to be Hindu, this could be a real possibility, coupled with the testimony of Sakshi’s friend.
Wearing a Kalava after murdering Sakshi would serve as a shield to hide his real intentions since he may have believed that his Muslim identity would be hidden. Pertinently, OpIndia discovered a video that Sahil had uploaded on his Instagram profile where the video showed a man carrying a gun with the VoiceOver saying that fearing anyone other than Allah was considered Shirk in Islam – from which we can conclude that Sahil did follow Islam rather staunchly.
These, however, are a matter of speculation and the truth can only be revealed after a thorough investigation. It is to be kept in mind that the police are not only investigating if the murder of Sakshi was premeditated, since Sahil purchased the knife 15 days ago, but are also investigating the Love Jihad angle after the testimony of Sakshi’s friend.
