By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
Welcoming the conviction of the three main culprits in the Ankita Bhandari murder case, Congress on Friday demanded that the Uttarakhand government should direct the prosecution to approach the High Court for the death penalty.
Talking to journalists at the party headquarters in Dehradun after the court’s decision which sentenced Pulkit Arya and two other accused to life imprisonment, the senior vice president of the state Congress Committee, Suryakant Dhasmana, said since the Ankita Bhandari murder case has rocked the entire state, the people are not ready to accept anything less than death penalty for the culprits.
Dhasmana also lamented that the investigating police team in the case has not been able to nab the VIP. Dhasmana claimed that due to top connections of this VIP in BJP and RSS, the prosecution was put under heavy pressure to save this person.
The 19-year-old Ankita Bhandari, a receptionist at Vanantra Resort in Yamkeshwar of Pauri district, was murdered by resort owner Pulkit Arya along with his two employees – Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta on Sept 18, 2022.