BAD BLOOD: STORY OF A DOOMED DATE
The tale of Priya Seth, accused of murdering Dushyant Sharma – a man she had met on Tinder – is only the latest among many recent crimes where the Internet was used to trap victims
In February 2018, Priya Seth and Dushyant Sharma met on Tinder.In May 2018 Sharma was dead, and Seth was in jail on charge of murdering him.Both of them had allegedly lied to each other.She had led him to believe that she was interested in him and not his millions of rupees.He had given her the impression that he had millions of rupees.The date was doomed from the start. At 7 pm on May 2, Dushyant Sharma, a 26-year-old project manager with a mining company, left his house in Jaipur’s Shivpuri Extension in his father’s Maruti Alto. “He said he was going out for a work-related matter and would be back in an hour,” said Rameshwar Sharma, his father.“At 9.15 pm, seeing that he hadn’t returned, I gave him a call, but it was disconnected.His phone was switched off right after.” At 9.45 pm, his wife, Bittu Sharma, rang him.“He told me that one of his company’s trucks has been confiscated by the police, and they are demanding a penalty of ₹8-10 lakh.He said he would return late night or in the morning,” said Bittu as tears welled up in her eyes. As midnight passed without another word from Sharma, a group of relatives and wellwishers took to the streets to search for him, alerting the police stations that fell on the way.At 9.45 am on May 3, Rameshwar received a call from his son’s phone number.“Dushyant told me, ‘Send these people ₹10 lakh or they will kill me.Mujhe bacha lo (Please save me)!’ Then a female voice came on the line.She said I had 20 minutes to transfer the money to his account. ‘Varna maar dungi (Or I will kill him)’.”
By 12 pm, Sharma’s father had wired ₹3 lakh to his saving account with the State Bank of India.That night he received a call from the Jhotwara police station, asking him to come to the SMS Hospital to look at a dead body.It was found by a stranger in a purple trolley suitcase lying on the highway between Jaipur and Delhi.The body was mangled beyond recognition, but Rameshwar was able to identify a bunch of accessories recovered from the bag’s front packet: sacred red threads, a black amulet, and finger rings studded with astrological gemstones.It was he who had piled Sharma’s body with protections against every evil turn of fate.“You see, he was our last surviving son.We had three.The first died as a child, and the second in a motorbike accident a few years ago,” said Rameshwar.
But as the prosecution’s lawyer, San- deep Luhadia, said, “Dushyant Sharma had made a small mistake.He had told Priya Seth that his name was Vivan Kohli, and that he was a big businessman from Delhi.”
In February, 27-year-old
Seth had also swiped right on 21-year-old Dikshant Kamra on
Tinder, and in March they rented a house together in Gandhinagar in an apartment complex called, fittingly, Eden Garden.A model and producer based in Mumbai, Kamra had moved back to Jaipur after the amount of money he owed people accrued to ₹ 25 lakh.“Priya Seth and Dikshant Kamra prepared a plot to kidnap him and extort money from him,” read the charge sheet. It was a simple enough plot, proceeding smoothly until Sharma’s lie toppled Seth’s.Seth met Sharma at a mutually fixed spot, sat in his car, and directed him to her house where Dikshant Kamra and a friend of his, Lakshya Walia, allegedly lay in wait.Then they tied him up, slipped a polythene bag over his head, thrashed him, and pulled out his wallet from his pocket.She saw the name on his identity cards.Dushyant Sharma told them the truth.He was far from rich; worse, he was a local.They beat him up some more.Seth and Kamra asked Sharma to arrange for ₹10 lakh or prepare to die.He had them call his father.
Rameshwar, an accountant at a local cooperative, said he had only ₹ 3 lakh at that time; he took a while sending it.In the meantime, Seth and Kamra learnt that Sharma’s debit card had a daily withdrawal limit of ₹25,000.They were also increasingly concerned about the chances of his father alerting the police.“They decided to kill Dushyant Sharma,” says the charge sheet.
Ten stab marks were found on Sharma’s neck.After he was dead, notes the charge sheet, Kamra and Seth drove to a market in Sharma’s car to buy a trolley bag, brought it home, stuffed his body in it, and drove out once again to toss it off on the highway, picking up Walia on the way.Between buying the bag and returning home, Seth went to an SBI ATM, slid Sharma’s debit card in, and took out ₹25,000.Early on May 4, a team of policemen found them sitting in Sharma’s Alto near the railway station in Gandhinagar.The three of them were arrested on charges of kidnap, extortion, murder, and elimination of evidence. Dushyant Sharma had led two lives.At home, he was an obedient son and a caring husband and father who “prayed after he woke up and counted the prayer beads before he went to sleep,” according to his father.He looks the part in his family’s framed portrait of him: shirt-pant, parted hair, temple tilak.“My son was simple and straightforward.No mischief,” said his mother, Vaijanti.“He was shy,” said his wife, Bittu.“Touched elders’ feet.Never spoke to any of my female friends.He used to hide in our room if they came home.He wasn’t interested in aaj-kal ki ladkiyan (modern girls),” she added.She didn’t know about his other life, though.On Facebook, where Dushyant Sharma’s account is still active, he looked like a party boy – printed T-Shirts, aviators, spiked hair – and acted like one too.
Seth had left one life for another.She was born and raised in a middle-class family in a small town in Rajasthan called Falna.She was born brilliant, said her father, a college professor, who doesn’t want to be named.“Got 90 per cent in 10th Boards, 85 per cent in 12th Boards.Good at dance, debating.Our shelves are lined with her medals and certificates,” he added.She was also problematic.“Stubborn.What she wanted, she wanted.Got angry easily.Broke things at home. Couldn’t take no.Didn’t have the fear of anything,” he said, wiping tears on his clothes.
In 2012, she was sent to Jaipur to attend college, where she chose to study arts, and to take coaching classes for entrance into administrative services.Coming from a town whose only claim to fame is a minor railway station, Jaipur was all big city and bright lights to her.She went straight for its fast lane.“She now wanted to become a crorepati,” said her father.In her second year in college, he said, Seth started looking for a job.“She got trapped by the wrong kind of people,” he added.“She became addicted to money.Began to smoke, drink,” said the investigating officer, Gur Bhupender Singh.
Soon, Seth launched her own enterprise, a website offering high-profile escorts to rich businessmen.Her transactions with them were only one-way, however.“When the clients contacted her on WhatsApp, she sent them some photos to choose from, demanded entire payment ( ₹25,000-30,000) in advance, met them at their hotel to collect the cash, switched off her phone, and vanished.She kept changing her phone number,” Singh said.
In 2014 one of her clients filed a case of cheating against her in Shyamnagar police station.She was picked up by the police again in 2014 for attempting to slice open the cash machine in an ATM with a gas cutter.Earlier in 2018, she spent a month in jail on charge of extorting ₹7.5 lakh from her live-in partner at the time by threatening him with false rape charges. Priya Seth has now been in Jaipur’s central jail for more than four months.She has become a household name in the city where lurid details about her ambition and lifestyle are breathlessly sought.She smoked Marlboro and drank Black Label in whisky and Himalayan in water, according to the police.Her branded shoes from Mumbai cost ₹ 35,000, said Dainik Bhaskar.The shoes from Mumbai cost ₹80,000, according to Dainik Jagran.She was fond of “expensive perfumes, clothes, cosmetics and air travel” said Rajasthan Patrika whose investigations revealed her monthly expenses to have been
“₹1.5 lakh”.
Every mention of her evokes extreme reactions.“She has an art,” said one of her lawyers who requested anonymity.“She doesn’t chase money, money chases her,” he added.“Once a woman loses her jhijhak (hesitation), there is nothing she will stop at,” said Sharma’s aunt.She also said that Seth’s branded shoes had cost at least ₹35,000.
On September 12, when the three accused were produced in Jaipur’s session court for the first time, all eyes were on Seth.Small and slight, she was dressed in a yellow kurta, black salwar, and a golden dupatta.Her pale face was even paler than it had appeared in the police mug shots, the dark circles darker, and her straight, brown hair shorter.The crowd was so mesmerised by the sight of her as she strode towards the stand that they hardly noticed the young men entering the court, Dikshant Kamra smiling and Lakshya Walia sulking.People continued to stare at Seth. They must have wanted to see if she would throw a tantrum, or break down, or show any regret.All they got was a poker face.
Ihave been editing Nai Sadi Prakashan’s true crime titles (Madhur Kathayein and Mahanagar Kahaniyan) since 1986.We have covered every trend in crimes emerging from love, sex, and marriage.We receive close to 400 submissions in a month from across north India; we accept about 40.Over the past five years, fifty per cent of stories we have carried have featured social media.
The Internet allows for a wide range of deception.Crimes such as blackmail and honey trapping have been made much easier by social media.Honey trapping is a hot trend.It is low-investment.All men have a weakness for women.If you lay a trap for ten, one will fall for it.
You can’t blame social media for the increase in crime when the problem lies with Indian society where lifestyles are new but mindsets are still old.Let’s take the pattern of matrimonial site fraud, which is rooted in societal hypocrisy.Men especially target women who put off marriage until they are settled in their career.By that time, they are in their mid to late 30s.These women are under such pressure to marry that often they don’t check the credentials of their suitors.
People become victims not because of illiteracy but agyanta (ignorance), andhvishvas (superstition) and avivek (lack of wisdom).Much of social media’s appeal for Indians lies in its being free and easy to use.People don’t use Twitter or Instagram in the villages; those platforms are only used by educated people.On the other hand, Facebook and WhatsApp are easy to pick up, and end up being misused more often.People are finding each other on Facebook and getting into relationships, but how can you be in love after just two meetings? Six months later, you realise your mistake. You want to get rid of that person.
You are talking about a country where women still go to holy men to bless them with pregnancy.If you introduce Internet to this context, what do you think will happen!
Priya Seth’s case is different from that of the average female criminal. Often, they transition from being victims to perpetrators in revenge or rebellion, for example Delhi’s flesh trade don Sonu Punjaban who was pushed into a life of crime through a series of relationships with criminals. Also, most female criminals are only noted for one case.Seth was never a victim.She is also a serial or professional criminal from what we know.Whatever she allegedly did – blackmail, honey trap or murder – she did at her own behest.She breaks all the rules.