New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) national general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Dushyant Kumar Gautam has found himself in the centre of a controversy when a television actress in some of her social media posts named him as the “VIP” linked to the Ankita Bhandari murder case. Gautam has asked state authorities to remove these defamatory videos from the internet and demanded a probe. However, the primary opposition party Congress has demanded his arrest, and has picked the allegation as one in which the senior BJP leader used his influence to bury his name during the investigation. The 2022 infamous murder case in which the 19-year-old receptionist at the Vanantara resort near Haridwar was allegedly raped and murdered had led to great concerns about increasing crime rates in Uttarakhand, the hill state that has historically been known for its low criminal activity. During the probe, one of the victim’s friends reported to the police the possibility that Bhandari was murdered after she refused coercive demands to “entertain” a VIP guest. However, in spite of being reported widely, the “VIP” angle wasn’t mentioned in the chargesheet. Last week, a television actress Urmila Sanawar rekindled interest in the case, after her social media posts indicated that the “VIP” in question in the Ankita Bhandari case was Gautam. The accusation has now snowballed into a big political controversy. Murky details about the case kept making news through the trial period. In May 2025, a district court in Kotdwar convicted owner of the resort Pulkit Arya and his two assistants Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta. Pulkit is the son of Vinod Arya, a senior BJP leader from Haridwar and the younger brother of Ankit Arya who was then the vice president of the Uttarakhand OBC commission. All three confessed to have committed the murder. Vinod Arya was later suspended from the party. Sanawar was reportedly married to a former BJP legislator from Jwalapur in Haridwar, Suresh Rathore, who she claimed married her after falsely claiming that his first wife was dead. When the allegation was noticed by the media, the BJP suspended Rathore for bigamy. After Sanawar’s now-viral videos accusing Gautam of being the “VIP” linked to the case, Rathore has said that he has already filed a case of blackmailing against Sanawar. “She is not my wife but is blackmailing me…. I have already given her Rs 50 lakh,” Rathore told reporters.Sanawar, however, said, “I have evidence about which VIP was to visit the resort that night. Rathore told me that it was Gattu.” In her videos, she claimed that several BJP leaders, referred to as “Gattu”, “Fattu” and “Bhattu”, used to sexually exploit women employees of the resort. Subsequent social media videos from anonymous handles claimed that BJP national general secretary and party’s Uttarakhand in-charge Gautam was “Gattu”. Later, Sanawar in her interviews with regional television channels identified “Gattu” as Gautam. The Congress has been demonstrating across different Uttarakhand’s towns since Sanawar made the allegations, and has demanded that Gautam be arrested. Responding to the allegations, Gautam posted a video message that said, “I have written to the chief minister’s secretary (Shailesh Bagauli) to conduct an inquiry into the allegations against me. I’ll leave social and political life if the allegations are found true.“I want them to prove my involvement in the case or I’ll file a defamation suit against all those who have levelled such a wild allegation…. The person who took my name should be probed. All the so-called evidence should be recovered from her and probed,” he said. Sanawar, however, has refused to budge. In her television interview, she claimed that she intended to leave him after she got to know about Rathore’s first marriage. But “a senior BJP leader” who was trying to protect Rathore persuaded her to stay in the relationship by promising her an election ticket from Jwalapur in 2022. However, in 2022, Rathore was fielded as the BJP candidate but lost. “Rathore started fighting with me…. (He alleged) that those who had offered me the seat did so after receiving some ‘gratification’ from me,” Urmila said in the interview.“So, I started recording our conversations. He would mention the name of Dushyant Kumar Gautam (to frighten her). I used to call Gautam my brother before. It was during a fight that he (Rathore) said Gautam had six-seven (women) and an illegitimate child. He said Gattu — Dushyant Kumar Gautam — was the VIP linked to the receptionist’s murder. He (Rathore) also named other BJP leaders and talked about someone behind the evidence-tampering and a woman who had a sleaze video of a BJP leader.”“I’m ready to submit the evidence to the police, but only after preserving it with me….,” she said.