Around 6 pm on June 13, Manisha Mittal, 41, walked out of the main gate of Saraswati Paradise International Public School (SPIPS) in Shimla. Suddenly, two masked men appeared on the narrow mountain pathway that connects the main road to the school entrance.
One of them shot Manisha from the rear, and moments later, the other fired from the front. She collapsed. It was a holiday and there was no one in the school.
The lone security guard, Yashpal, who was standing at the entrance, saw the assailants. But he could do nothing.
“I froze,” he recalled. “They were masked. They appeared from nowhere and by the time I could react, they had already shot her and ran away”.
This private school in Sanjauli, a four-storey building nestled in a picturesque valley across eight bighas of land with the hills in the background, is prime property worth crores. Manisha was the school’s administrator.
The audacious murder left the hill town in shock.
Immediately, Shimla Police began its investigation to identify the two masked killers. The murder had been recorded by the school’s CCTV cameras.
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The police also found out that the killers had parked their car, a white Maruti Swift on the main road, 50 metres downhill, and then walked up. Visuals of the car were picked by other CCTV cameras in the vicinity. However, it had a fake number plate.
How had the killers appeared outside the school entrance exactly when Manisha walked out? Police investigators knew that the answer to this question would help solve the mystery.
They quickly seized the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) of the CCTV cameras installed on the premises to reconstruct the victim’s final moments and gather clues about the attackers.
To their surprise, they stumbled upon an unexpected lead — the cameras were equipped with Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking, allowing live footage to be viewed remotely. And the one with access to the live feed was Manisha’s younger brother, Himank Mittal.
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Himank, who is the chairman of the school, wasn’t in Shimla. The 31-year-old was confined to bed in his home in Rohtak. On June 1, he had been attacked by “unknown people” leaving him with multiple fractures in both his legs and an arm.
On June 30, police arrested him as well as his business partner Govind, 30, alleging they had conspired to murder Manisha. Police said Govind allegedly hired two contract shooters to execute the killing.
Murder he wrote
Himank, police said, had shared remote access to the school’s CCTV footage with Govind.
“Govind further passed the access to the two shooters. On the day of the murder, the shooters monitored Manisha’s movements on their phones. As soon as she stepped outside the school, they shot her at point-blank range, killing her on the spot,” Shimla Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Gaurav Singh told The Indian Express.
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Police identified the alleged shooters as Ashish Ahlawat, 22, and Deepak Budhwal, 25, both from Haryana.
According to investigators, Himank had paid Govind Rs 8.5 lakh to hire the shooters and arrange the vehicle they used to travel to Shimla.
Police said Govind paid the two contract killers Rs 70,000 as part of the deal. “Of this, Rs 50,000 was paid in cash, while Rs 20,000 was transferred through a bank transaction,” police said.
Govind, police said, had escaped to Thailand three days before the killing to create an alibi. From there, he coordinated with the shooters. He returned on June 16.
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“All four accused have been arrested. Their mobile phones and other electronic devices have been seized and sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for analysis to corroborate evidence gathered during the investigation,” said the SSP.
No love lost
The siblings had been estranged for years, with tensions escalating after their father, Dharam Pal Mittal, passed away in 2021. Their father founded SPIPS in 2013.
Before his arrest, police said Himank, while denying any involvement in the murder, claimed he and Manisha had not been on speaking terms.
At the heart of the feud, police said, was a dispute over the registration of the society that governed the Shimla school and its branch in Rohtak. “As per our investigation, Manisha had initiated the process of registering a new society in her name, while the existing society was registered in Himank’s name, making him chairman of the school,” the SSP said.
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“She was also upset after Himank inducted Govind as his business partner in the school management committee.”
Those close to the family said it was hard to ascertain when the animosity began to grow, but pointed out that Manisha’s marriage was a trigger.
A close family member, requesting anonymity, told The Indian Express, “When the differences between Manisha and Himank started, it is very difficult to say. But Manisha’s marriage to Subhash Yadav in 2012 was definitely a turning point… It was an intercaste marriage… Initially no one in the Mittal family had accepted the marriage; it was only later that they came around.”
He said the marriage didn’t last.
“After some time, Manisha developed differences with her husband, a government doctor with the Haryana health department, and started living separately along with her daughter.”
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The family member maintained, “Most of the relatives are not aware how Dharam Pal had divided his property as both his children were staking a claim on it.”
Dr Subhash declined comment when contacted.
Police, too, said they knew about the bad blood between brother and sister. The feud frequently spilled into complaints filed with local authorities.
A police source said, “The Shimla Police knew about the property dispute as both of them kept filing complaints against each other with the local police. These were civil complaints, where police couldn’t interfere. On some occasions, police teams, along with the local SDM, had also visited the school at Sanjauli in the presence of both parties…”
A source privy to the investigation said the siblings were also embroiled in a dispute over a fixed deposit worth Rs 8 crore.
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According to police, the siblings’ father had secured a bank loan for this amount to expand the school’s operations in 2018. However, after the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the expansion plans, the money was placed in a fixed deposit.
Dharam Pal died in 2021, while his wife, Nutan Rani, passed away in 2022.
Following his death, a dispute arose over the funds, with Himank recently staking claim to the deposit, which was opposed by Manisha.
Attack before the murder
Two months before she was killed, Manisha had shifted to Shimla with her 17-year-old daughter and was living on the school campus.
A fortnight before her murder, police said, she went live on Facebook, alleging she faced threats from her brother and Govind over the property dispute related to the school’s Rohtak branch.
Police said Himank too had been attacked on June 1 in Rohtak — days before his sister was killed.
A police officer said, “Himank sustained multiple fractures… The Rohtak police registered an FIR based on his statement. We cannot say at this stage whether the attack on Himank was part of the conspiracy to eliminate Manisha. The Haryana Police is investigating that aspect.”
Was Manisha involved? Police did not elaborate except to say that she had sought outside help to resolve their dispute. “Our investigation suggests that Manisha had sought the assistance of certain private individuals in Haryana to resolve her dispute with her younger brother,” the officer added.
A senior police officer pointed to a video that had surfaced before the attack on Himank.
“In the video, Manisha was seen sitting with some people from Haryana, appealing that they sort out the dispute. The people seen in the video were taking her side.”
SSP Singh said the investigation so far indicates that the property dispute intensified after Himank inducted Govind as his partner in the management of the Shimla school.
“Property is the only motive behind this killing,” he said. “I believe this is the first case of its kind reported in Shimla in recent years.”
In the interim, the Shimla district administration has appointed Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Jyoti Rana as the administrator of the school, which caters to nearly 850 students from nursery to Class XII and has a staff strength of 72.
An unanswered question
One question remained. Did Himank watch his sister being killed? Police said they cannot answer that yet.
“Indeed, Himank was receiving the live CCTV feed on his phone on the day Manisha was shot,” SSP Singh said. “But we can’t say whether he was actually watching it when the murder took place.”
That question may ultimately be answered through forensic examination of the accused’s electronic devices. For now, investigators said they know the live feed reached his phone. Whether he witnessed the killing unfold remains unknown.
