Gurugram: Investigators in the Adani Realty manager Yuvraj Singh Manchanda murder case allege that his ex-colleague Anya Vats owed him close to Rs 1 crore, and that she planned the murder with her live-in partner at a flat in Sector 70, buying a country-made pistol three months in advance.
Yuvraj Singh Manchanda went out wedding shopping with his sister on 6 September. He had just bought a sherwani for his own wedding. By evening, he was gone.
The 31-year-old, a sales manager with Adani Realty who lived in Sarita Vihar and worked in Gurugram, told his family he had a client meeting to attend and would be home by 10 pm.
He sent his last WhatsApp message at 4:16 pm on 8 September. His phone went dead soon after. Five days later, his family filed a missing persons report at the Lajpat Nagar police station in Delhi. His decomposed body was pulled out of a drain in Sector 70, Gurugram, on 10 September.
Police had arrested Manchanda’s former colleague Anya Vats and her live-in partner Sanyam Sachdeva, and say the two have confessed to killing him.
“We are probing two opposite financial strands in this case,” a police officer told ThePrint. “Anya has claimed Yuvraj owed her around Rs 30 lakh, but she has given us different versions of why she felt threatened by him, and that figure hasn’t been substantiated yet.
“At the same time, we have found that she had repeatedly borrowed money from Yuvraj and failed to repay it. He is believed to have discussed this with his family and friends, and the amount owed to him runs close to Rs 1 crore. We are verifying bank transactions on both sides and checking whether they had any common clients or business dealings that could explain the larger sums involved.”
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The Rs 1.25-crore extortion case
An FIR registered earlier at Delhi’s Parliament Street police station accuses Vats and her associates of running an elaborate extortion racket.
According to police, between October 2024 and August 2025, a senior executive at a non-banking finance company (NBFC) who is a former schoolmate of Sachdeva, was allegedly sent fake notices purporting to be from the Enforcement Directorate, the National Investigation Agency, the Research and Analysis Wing and the Ministry of Home Affairs, invoking laws including the PMLA, NDPS and UAPA. Over that period, the complainant was allegedly pressured into transferring around Rs 1.25 crore, largely into an account linked to Vats.
The threats did not stop there. Vats allegedly later demanded a further Rs 26 crore from the same complainant, claiming that Rs 13.8 crore had already been paid to government agencies on his behalf. One WhatsApp message sent to him read, in part, that he should “sell his wife or do anything else, but repay the money”.
“We are examining whether this was an isolated case or part of a pattern, whether other victims exist who haven’t come forward,” a police officer familiar with the investigation said.
Did Manchanda know too much
Investigators are now probing a troubling overlap: Manchanda, according to a family friend, had told his fiancée he was going to Gurugram for a client meeting with Vats. Police are examining whether Manchanda had become aware of the couple’s alleged fraud activities, and whether that knowledge cost him his life, in addition to the money Vats owed him.
On Monday, the Delhi Police carried out a scene recreation in Gurugram, retracing the route the accused took along the Dwarka Expressway and through Sectors 65 and 70.
The accused reportedly demonstrated how they shot Manchanda, where they hid the weapon, and the point from which his body was pushed into the drain. The exercise was videographed in full.
Two lapses that delayed the case
The Delhi Police had logged Manchanda’s missing persons report on the inter-state police portal on 11 September, a day after the Gurugram Police recovered his body. Yet, the Gurugram Police did not upload the body’s details onto the portal until 16 September, and even then, filed it under the wrong category, “unidentified person found” instead of “unidentified body found,” so the two states’ records never matched.
The Gurugram Police completed the mandatory 72-hour wait and cremated the unidentified body on 14 September, two days before the portal was corrected. Manchanda’s family had no way of knowing in time and could not attend his last rites.
The Badshahpur police station’s investigating officer, Suhail Khan, has been suspended over allegations that he updated the police portal only after the cremation had taken place. The case is now being investigated by Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar police station.
Manchanda’s sister Karishma has moved the Saket Court seeking directions to preserve records, belongings and electronic material currently in the custody of Badshahpur police personnel.
The court has directed the Gurugram Police to be informed of the plea, ordered that the material be preserved and produced before it on 22 September, and directed that it subsequently be handed over to Delhi Police along with the FIR for further investigation.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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