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Journalism of Courage
October 20, 2023.
It was 8.30 am. At the Tilak Nagar police station in West Delhi, police personnel were shuffling in for the morning shift. The day’s noise was yet to find its way inside.
The calm was broken by the loud ring of the phone. A resident of Block 25 in Tilak Nagar had called the PCR unit, which then transferred the call to the station. Sub-inspector Sukhpal picked up.
The resident said he had spotted the body of a woman dumped near a Municipal Corporation of Delhi school. “It is in an awful condition,” the man informed.
A team led by the then Station House Officer (SHO) Sanjeev Kumar rushed to the spot, 1.5 km away. It was around 9 am when the policemen arrived.
The body had been dumped on the side of the road, near the school’s boundary wall. A small crowd had gathered but no one had dared to step closer.
“We had to hold our nose. The stench was overwhelming,” said an assistant-sub inspector, who was among the team members. “The body was partially decomposed. The face was unrecognisable.”
“It was a brutal murder,” recalls another police officer.
“The woman was wearing a black frock and a pair of sandals. Her head was bundled in a black plastic bag, tied tightly around her neck, to ensure she suffocated to death. Her wrists and knees were tied with iron chains. There were deep cuts all across her body… some burn marks too.”
On the directions of then district DCP Vichitra Veer, a case of murder was registered at Tilak Nagar police station. The probe was assigned to Inspector Hari Singh, who was then posted at the station as Inspector (Investigation). The police station’s Crack Team — personnel assisting investigating officers probing complicated or heinous cases — was activated, and teams from the district’s Special Staff and Crime Branch were also roped in. A dedicated probe team was set up under the supervision of then Additional DCP Raja Banthia.
At first, the police team had little to go on. Evidence that investigators gathered from the crime scene suggested that she was around 35 years old and from an affluent background.
“We wanted to know who dumped the body so we started scanning CCTV footage from around this spot. Footage from a house near the school had recorded a person dumping the body from a hatchback car. It was, however, blurred and we were unable to recognise the man,” recalls Hari Singh. “We began tracking the movement of the car using footage from every CCTV camera facing the road.”
Soon three members of the Crack Team — Head Constables Rajbir Singh and Dharamraj and Constable Dhanesh Joshi — managed to identify the vehicle as a Hyundai Santro and traced its registration number.
This was a big breakthrough.
Based on the registration details, another police team went to look for the car’s registered owner. It was a 40-year-old woman living in the same neighbourhood.
“She lived in a JJ cluster in Tilak Nagar. When we asked her about the car, she was surprised. She said she had never purchased one…,” said an officer.
She didn’t have enough money to run her household, how could she buy a vehicle, she told the policemen. The investigators checked her antecedents and found she worked as a domestic help.
Police knew that once they found the person who had actually paid for this car, the mystery behind this murder would soon start to unfold.
They then checked the car’s history and discovered that it was initially purchased by a resident of Tilak Nagar, who later sold it to a resident of Uttam Nagar. The second owner then gave the vehicle to a dealer based in Janakpuri, from whom it was bought two weeks before the incident.
Investigators rushed to question the dealer. He told them that he had sold the car to a man named Gurpreet Singh. He also explained that Gurpreet wanted the car to be registered in a woman’s name — the domestic help police had questioned.
“I had no problem with that,” the dealer had told the police. “I was interested in selling my car and once I got a good price, I didn’t ask any questions”.
The police called the woman for questioning again. They wanted to know whether there was any connection between her and Gurpreet. The woman told them that she had worked at Gurpreet’s house in Tilak Nagar as a domestic help. “He had asked for my Aaadhar card,’’ she said. “I had no idea that he bought a car in my name.”
Gurpreet had two houses — one in Janakpuri and another in Tilak Nagar. The woman worked for around two months at his Tilak Nagar residence. But he lived with his parents and sister in Janakpuri.
Now, the police team had their first suspect.
“While checking CCTV footage from the time of the car’s delivery, we obtained a clear image of Gurpreet. With the help of human intelligence, his address was traced, and a raid was conducted at his Janakpuri residence around 7 pm on October 20,” the officer said.
Gurpreet lived in a builder flat on the first floor of a residential complex, on a narrow lane with houses on both sides. It was a 3-BHK space with a big balcony and a lift.
He, his elder sister and mother were at home at the time. His father, who was an astrology consultant, was out of the country on business.
Around 25 personnel from the police station, Special Staff and Crime Branch were part of the raiding team. “When Gurpreet saw the police at his doorstep, he locked the door from inside. The team surrounded the building,” the officer said.
Some of them stood outside the lift on the ground floor, some stood outside his entrance door, while others climbed the balcony and broke the window pane to enter the house, he added.
A large amount of cash was recovered from Gurpreet’s house. Police said he had tried to hide some of it inside the washing machine and some under the bed.
“It was over Rs 2 crore,” the officer said.
“When questioned about the money, Gurpreet claimed it was proceeds from a property his family had recently sold in West Delhi. We notified the Income Tax Department about it,” he added.
While one team questioned his mother and sister, another team took Gurpreet to the police station where he admitted to the crime late into the night.
But he did not reveal the exact reason behind the murder. “Initially, he told us that he was in a relationship with the woman but she was refusing to continue it. So, he killed her. Later, he told us the real reason — he said he killed her for not repaying Rs 8 lakh she owed him,” the officer said.
“Her name was Nina Berger and she was from Zurich in Switzerland,” Gurpreet told the police.
The tangled threads of the murder mystery began to unravel one by one.
“He had meticulously planned this murder… every step of it,” the then DCP Veer said. “He disclosed the woman’s name. Till then, we didn’t know who she was.”
Nina had come to India on October 12. She used to work in a private company in Zurich before she lost the job. She was survived by her parents.
During further investigation, police said it was found that Gurpreet and his father, Arjun Singh, had been working abroad, mostly in European countries, claiming to provide relief to people from pain and illness, help them find jobs, and solve their problems through rituals and gemstones.
According to the chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police in January 2024, Gurpreet met Nina around five years earlier on a dating app called Omegle in 2021. He was visiting his relatives in Zurich at the time.
Later, he visited Switzerland four times to meet her, as she was anxious about not having a job.
Gurpreet assured her that he would perform ‘rituals’ and chant mantras for her — for a fee. He also introduced his father to her as a renowned saint but concealed the fact that they were related.
Gurpreet kept performing remedial rituals, assuring her that they would heal her financial problems, but she saw little improvement.
The investigation also revealed that Nina was facing a financial crisis and she had borrowed Rs 6-7 lakh from Gurpreet. “She neither paid for the rituals nor repaid the borrowed money. In September 2022, Gurpreet went to Switzerland and demanded repayment, but she requested more time. Months later, he later decided to eliminate her. In October, 2023, he invited her to Delhi under the pretext of performing another ‘ritual,’ promising to help her attain ‘mental peace’ through occult practices and gemology,” the chargesheet added.
Before her arrival, police said, Gurpreet had set his plan in motion — he purchased a car in someone else’s name and bought several iron chains and locks from a hardware shop.
“Nina arrived on October 11, 2023. A day later, he called her and pressured her to return his money. On October 17, they went to nearby ATMs, but she withdrew only Rs 10,000. This angered Gurpreet. On October 18, he took her to another ATM, but she again failed to withdraw any cash. They got into the car, where an argument broke out. Nina accused him of not performing the ritual properly and even threatened to expose him,” the officer said.
Fearing that she would ruin his business, Gurpreet pretended to perform yet another ritual. “First, he wrapped her hands, legs, and body with chains and drove to a deserted spot in a parking area in West Delhi’s Sant Nagar Extension. There, he turned up the music, wrapped a cloth around Nina’s neck, and strangled her. To ensure she was dead, he covered her mouth and chest with black polythene and sealed it with tape. He later parked his car after covering the windows with black film,” the officer said.
Police said that before leaving the spot, Gurpreet took Nina’s belongings, including her iPhone and a camera. “He deleted all his chats and call records from her phone to destroy evidence. After about 48 hours, he returned to the area, drove to Tilak Nagar, and dumped her body near the school,” the officer further said.
He parked the vehicle at a parking lot near his Tilak Nagar residence, which was later recovered.
According to investigators, statements of over a dozen people connected to Gurpreet and his family members were taken. His mother and sister were not aware of his acts. His father was served multiple notices to join the probe but he never did.
“There were just two characters in the entire story — one was Nina, and the other was her alleged killer, Gurpreet,” an officer said, adding there was no other person to corroborate the story or the relationship between the victim and the accused.
Forensic and scientific evidence — including bloodstains found in Gurpreet’s car, Nina’s fingerprints recovered from her hotel room, and her travel records — all indicated that the body was indeed hers.
However, police still required the family’s confirmation to conduct the final identification and proceed with the autopsy. Nina’s family were reluctant to come to India either to identify her or collect her mortal remains.
Inspector Hari Singh remained in touch with them through the Swiss Embassy. “Later, with the consent of the Embassy, we conducted the autopsy with a panel of three doctors at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital,” another senior police officer said.
Police carried out DNA profiling and biometric tests, which confirmed it was Nina, the officer added.
Gurpreet’s father, meanwhile, never joined the investigation. Although he has not been named as an accused, police said his verification is pending.
An officer said Gurpreet was the lone planner and executioner of the murder. “No evidence of anyone else’s involvement was found. That’s why no one else was chargesheeted in the case.”
Meanwhile, Gurpreet’s mother and sister still live in the same house in Janakpuri. They keep to themselves, rarely interacting with neighbours, the officer added.
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