By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
After months of ordeal, the family members of Riya Kashyap (22), who went missing in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun district in September last year, have got the shock of their life.
DNA tests have confirmed the mutilated remains recovered on October 16 last year from the Hathnikund Barrage in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh belong to Riya Kashyap. She had gone missing from the Jeevangarh area of Vikasnagar in Dehradun district on Sept 7.
Based on electronic and circumstantial evidence regarding Riya’s disappearance and murder, three persons including the prime accused, Shahbaz, were arrested within few days of the disappearance of Riya. Since then, the accused have moved the High Court to seek bail.
“Since the murder has been confirmed, we will now forcefully oppose the bail application in the High Court,” a top police official said. But the police has ruled out the possibility of any love jihad in the case. “We have not come across any such evidence pertaining to love jehad,” the police official said.
After Riya went missing on September 7, 2025, her father, Gopal Kashyap filed a missing report at the Vikasnagar police station. In his complaint, he accused Shahbaz4, a resident of Dhakrani village in the Vikasnagar area of harassing his daughter and being responsible for her disappearance.
Acting on this complaint, the police registered a case under section 140(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and initiated an investigation.
Based on an analysis of Riya’s Call Detail Records (CDRs), CCTV footage, and other evidences, Shahbaz was arrested. During rigorous interrogation, he confessed that he knew Riya and admitted that after she refused to engage in physical relations with him, he lured her to the Kulhal area with the specific intent of killing her. There, he allegedly strangled her to death before throwing her body in the Shakti Canal.
Shahbaz also disclosed the involvement of two accomplices in the crime — a friend named Faizan, a resident of Dhakrani, and a juvenile who were also arrested. Subsequently, acting on information provided by Shahbaz, Ria’s scarf was recovered from the crime scene.
Afte the arrest, the police conducted a search operation for several days in the Shakti Canal and its surrounding areas in an effort to trace the body of Ria. When she could not be found, alerts were also dispatched to police stations in neighboring districts. The police suspected that Ria’s body might have been swept away from the Shakti Canal into the Yamuna River, a suspicion that was subsequently proven correct.
On October 16, 2025, upon receiving information from the Mirzapur police station in Saharanpur regarding the recovery of a decomposed and headless body at the Hathnikund Barrage, the Vikasnagar police proceeded to the location accompanied by the young woman’s family members. However, due to the advanced stage of decomposition, the body could not be identified.
Consequently, DNA samples were collected from both the body and the parents and sent to a forensic laboratory. The report received from the laboratory on May 12 subsequently confirmed the identity of the deceased as Ria.