Ghaziabad (PTI): The Uttar Pradesh Police has arrested singer Samar Singh, an accused in the death of popular Bhojpuri actress Akanksha Dubey, from here, officials said on Friday.

A look-out notice had been issued against Singh and another man after Dubey was found dead in a hotel room in Sarnath around a fortnight ago.

Singh was hiding in a housing society in the Nandgram area of Ghaziabad -- the western Uttar Pradesh district bordering Delhi.

He was held late on Thursday night in a joint operation by the local police and their visiting counterparts from Varanasi, a senior officer said.

"A team from the Sarnath police station of the Varanasi Commissionerate had come to Ghaziabad late Thursday night. They sought the help of Ghaziabad police in nabbing Samar Singh from the Charms Castle (housing) society," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Ghaziabad City) Nipun Agarwal said.

"The accused is being presented in a Ghaziabad court for transit remand by the Varanasi police team," the DCP said on Friday morning.

Akanksha Dubey, a popular Bhojpuri actress, was found dead inside a hotel room in Varanasi on March 26. The 25-year-old actress was found hanging from the fan by a piece of cloth. Dubey, a resident of Bhadohi district, had gone to Varanasi to film a movie and was staying in the hotel.

Lawyer Shashak Shekhar Tripathi, who has taken up the case for the actress' mother Madhu Dubey, has raised a question mark on the post-mortem report and said that he was seeking the advice of medical experts and based on it preparing questions for the police.

Tripathi had on Wednesday demanded a probe by the CBI or CB-CID into the matter. In a letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, he alleged that the 25-year-old actress' death was not by suicide, rather she was killed by some people in the hotel room.

He also alleged that Akansha's body was "forcibly cremated" despite her mother's insistence that the cremation should happen only after the post-mortem report arrives.

Many known people in the Bhojpuri industry were exploiting Dubey and were not paying her for her work, the lawyer had alleged.

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Bengaluru: Hotel Taj West End in Bengaluru received an email on Saturday morning, with a bomb threat. A thorough investigation, using sniffer dogs and the bomb squad on the hotel premises proved the threat to be a hoax, a top police officer has said.

The staff of the hotel, commonly used to host prominent politicians and cricketers, received the bomb threat e-mail, Deputy Commissioner of Police (central), HT Shekhar said. The bomb disposal squad rushed to the scene on being informed of the mail and checked the premises of the hotel thoroughly, before declaring the email threat a hoax, he added.

A complaint has been registered by the police and investigation is underway.

Three hotels in Bengaluru, including a five-star hotel, received bomb threats in May 2024. The city also witnessed a blast at the popular Rameshwaram Café, injuring at least nine people, which shocked the residents of Bengaluru.

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