‘I FEEL SUFFOCATED, MOTHER’

Twelve days after she was found hanging at her marital home, actress Twisha Sharma was cremated today — her body having passed through two post-mortems, a High Court order, a Supreme Court suo motu, and a nation’s outrage. Her husband remains in police custody. The truth remains contested.

BHOPAL, May 24, 2026 — The funeral pyre of Twisha Sharma burned at the Bhadbhada cremation ground in Bhopal today, Sunday, May 24, 2026. Her brother performed her last rites, while relatives consoled her grief-stricken mother at the cremation ground. She was 33. She had been married for five months.

The cremation came only after a second post-mortem — court-ordered, conducted by a four-doctor team flown in from AIIMS Delhi — could be completed. Twelve days had passed since her body was found. Twelve days of legal wrangling, a fugitive husband, a disputed autopsy, and a Supreme Court intervention. Twisha Sharma could not be laid to rest until the country’s highest institutions had weighed in on how she died.

The Death

Twisha Sharma, a 33-year-old former model and actress originally from Noida, was found hanging at her marital home in Bhopal’s Katara Hills area on May 12. Her husband Samarth Singh, a lawyer, and his mother Giribala Singh, a former district judge, were booked for alleged dowry harassment and other offences following her death.

Her family did not accept the initial findings. The preliminary AIIMS Bhopal post-mortem pointed to “hanging suicide,” but the family claimed multiple injury marks on her body indicated murder. In an admission of a lapse in the local probe, the ACP confirmed that the investigating officer had failed to send the rope allegedly used in the hanging to AIIMS during the autopsy, and said action would be taken against the erring officer.

Her body’s preservation became its own crisis. Twisha’s father Navnidhi Sharma urgently pressed for expedited investigation as “the clock was ticking” for the body to decompose. At AIIMS Bhopal mortuary, where her body was stored at -4°C, doctors had advised it be kept at -80°C for long-term preservation — a facility currently unavailable at AIIMS Bhopal.

The Husband: Ten Days on the Run

Samarth Singh had been on the run since his wife’s dead body was found hanging on the terrace of their matrimonial house. He appeared at a Jabalpur court on May 22 to surrender, ten days after Twisha’s death. Prior to his surrender, a Bhopal court had rejected his anticipatory bail plea, and the Bhopal Police had officially announced a cash reward of Rs 10,000 for any information leading to his whereabouts.

The Husband’s Statement — and What Her Phone Revealed

Bhopal police grilled Samarth Singh for over two hours on Saturday, shortly after a city court remanded him to seven days of police custody. During interrogation, Singh told police that his wife showed behavioural changes after her pregnancy was confirmed on April 17. He claimed that while marital tensions had already existed between them for the past five months, the confirmation of the pregnancy led to escalating fights and arguments. He recalled that they fought over taking a trip to Rajasthan’s Ajmer, hours before she was found hanging at their Bhopal residence.

Singh further told investigators that after repeated persuasion, Twisha returned to Bhopal on April 23 along with her mother and brother. However, the relationship allegedly remained strained. Singh reportedly told police he had already booked tickets to Bengaluru for April 24 and that Twisha had initially agreed to travel with him — before changing her mind and expressing a desire to travel to Ajmer to stay with her brother, triggering yet another argument.

Twisha’s own phone painted a starkly different picture. Digital evidence collected by police from her phone revealed that she was deeply unhappy at her in-laws’ home, repeatedly asking her parents to take her away. “I feel suffocated, mother,” read one of her messages.

Twisha’s brother, Major Harshit Sharma of the Indian Army, said she had called her mother at 10.05 pm on the night of her death, but abruptly disconnected the call after her husband entered the room. “Repeated attempts were thereafter made to contact her by our family, but no one responded,” he said.

Her cousin Meenakshi alleged that the harassment peaked when Twisha lost her work-from-home job and became pregnant, and that her husband refused to acknowledge the child.

The Dowry Allegations and the Defence

Twisha’s family alleged a dowry demand of Rs 20 lakh. Her father Navnidhi Sharma and the state government separately moved the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking cancellation of the anticipatory bail granted to former judge Giribala Singh by a Bhopal court.

The defence pushed back firmly. The lawyer for the accused said his clients were fully cooperating with the investigation, and that the Rs 20 lakh dowry allegation was “full of contradictions.” He added that his clients had never objected to a CBI probe and were not tampering with any evidence.

Highest Courts Intervene

The Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of the Twisha Sharma dowry death case, citing alleged institutional bias and procedural discrepancies. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi is scheduled to hear the matter on May 25.

Following the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s order, a four-member team of senior doctors from AIIMS Delhi arrived in Bhopal on Saturday night and commenced the second autopsy on Sunday morning. Its findings are now awaited.

The Bar Council of India has also suspended Samarth Singh’s legal licence, stating that the allegations against him affect the dignity and public image of the legal profession.

A Marriage of Five Months

Twisha Sharma married Samarth Singh in December 2025. By May 12, 2026, she was gone. By May 24, she was ashes.

The second autopsy report is pending. The Supreme Court hearing is tomorrow. Samarth Singh is in police custody. His mother, a former judge, remains on bail. And a family that spent twelve desperate days fighting to keep a body cold enough to tell the truth now watches a pyre burn, still without answers.