Nagpur: Eleven days after a 27-year-old Lucknow cafe owner, Shiva Sharma, died after falling off the fourth floor of an upscale apartment in the Uttar Pradesh capital, a joint team of Nagpur crime branch and Lucknow police arrested Sharma’s live-in partner, Shraddha Dubey, her sister Rashmi Dubey and their driver Adil from Chinchbhuvan here on Tuesday.Clad in a burqa, influencer-model Shraddha Dubey’s roller-coaster run from Lucknow to Agra to Nepal to Nagpur finally ended after an ‘11th floor’ clue provided by the getaway vehicle’s driver along with an e-rickshaw’s CCTV trail of 250 cameras.After searching 12 locations with internet-based location inputs and CCTV footage, police traced the trio to a rented flat on the 11th floor of an apartment in Chinchbhuvan on Nagpur outskirts. The mission kicked off after Lucknow police commissioner made a call to Nagpur commissioner Vishwas Nangare Patil on Monday evening and shared the registration number and location details of the vehicle used by suspects.Crime Branch teams began tracking their movements and checking possible hideouts across the city, said DCP crime Deepak Aggarwal.During questioning, the car driver from Uttar Pradesh reportedly told investigators the trio had travelled in an e-rickshaw after reaching the Ganeshpeth area. He also provided a crucial lead on a discussion involving the ‘11th floor’, which he overheard. This information helped investigators narrow the search.Police teams searched 12 locations, including Gaddigodam and Chinchbhuvan, while tracking the suspects on CCTV and GPS inputs. “Investigators examined footage from around 250 cameras to establish the e-rickshaw’s route,” said ACP Vaibhav Jadhav, adding three crime branch teams were formed. “An Uttar Pradesh police team reached Monday and another touched down on Wednesday.The vehicle was last traced on CCTV in Chinchbhuvan, helping police identify the apartment where the trio was hiding. Investigators also found that Shraddha’s driver and co-accused, Adil, was using his mobile phone to make bookings and coordinate movements.Shraddha and Rashmi allegedly relied on the driver’s phone instead of using their own devices, making the digital trail an important part of the investigation, said a source.After zeroing in on the 11-storied flat Chinchbhuvan bridge, police kept the premises under surveillance for nearly 24 hours. A team from Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) later joined the operation, and the three suspects were taken into custody.Shraddha, who had been on the run for 10 days, moving between Nepal, Agra, Lucknow and Kanpur before reaching Nagpur, wore a burqa to conceal her identity. She had also released a video claiming Sharma had died by suicide.
