30 yrs on, cops recall smell that led them to a murder most foul

On the night of July 2, thirty years ago, flames rose from the chimney of a Connaught Place restaurant, carrying with them the smoke from a crime that would haunt the Capital's conscience for decades.

- Karn Pratap Singh and Hemani Bhandari

NEW DELHI: It was late and the restaurant, Bagiya Barbeque, had already shut. But someone was still inside, stoking the fire of a tandoor that hid a horrifying secret.

The body of Naina Sahni, 29, lay charred inside. Her partner, Delhi Youth Congress chief Sushil Sharma, had allegedly shot her at home and then attempted to dispose of her body in the restaurant he part-owned—Bagiya Barbeque, located inside Ashok Yatri Niwas, a government-run ITDC hotel in Connaught Place.

The murder and attempted disposal of Sahni's body led to a media storm and public shock, intensified by Sharma's political stature and the sheer brazenness of the crime.

The next morning, headlines carried words like "ghoulish," "grisly," and "unthinkable." Hindustan Times, in an editorial later that week, likened the incident to the plot of an Agatha Christie novel—only crueler.

A chain of witnesses

The police timeline would later reconstruct a sequence of rage, panic, and attempted concealment. Investigators said Sharma suspected Sahni of having an affair with her former classmate and fellow party worker, Matloob Karim. That evening, after a heated argument at their Mandir Marg home, he allegedly shot her at close range with his licensed revolver.

With her body in the boot of his white Maruti 800, Sharma drove to the restaurant and summoned Keshav Kumar, the manager. According to the police, Sharma instructed Kumar to remove everyone from the premises, citing an emergency. Later, he allegedly enlisted Kumar's help in lifting Sahni's body out of the car and onto the restaurant tandoor—a large clay oven used since centuries in north Indian eateries for roasting meats and bread.

Kumar, detained early in the investigation, would later become the first crucial link in the chain of events, confessing his role and naming Sharma as the killer.

But what made the police act in the first place was a seemingly minor detail: a smell.