Tragic Love Story: Teen’s Influencer Dreams Shatter Amidst Domestic Strife | Delhi News – Times of India

Sonia was strangled by her boyfriend.

NEW DELHI: Sonia had amassed an impressive 7,000-strong following on Instagram. The 18-year-old’s ambition? To leverage her online popularity into a career as a social media influencer, transforming her family’s financial status. But her life took a devastating turn when she fell in love with Mohammed Saleem, who goes by the name of Sanju. Sonia’s Instagram profile declared “I love Bhoot”, her nickname for the boy. The interfaith relationship wasn’t to prosper — the ‘ghost’ turned her dream into a nightmare.
Born to migrant parents from Bihar, Sonia saw them struggle for a living. Their meagre earnings, he as a fodder seller and she as a domestic worker, meant Sonia had to drop out of school after Class X, according to sister Neha. “With the paltry savings our family had, Sonia bought a smartphone. After waking up at 9am daily, finishing the household chores while our parents were at work and taking care of her dog, she made reels all day. She loved buying new clothes and was very fond of fashion and dressing up,” said Neha.
The sister also revealed that Sonia started learning how to use the sewing machine and practised all day because she was keen to design and sew her own clothes. The family lives on rent in a house in Nangloi’s Kamruddin Nagar, but the teenager wanted to buy her family a house of their own. Seeing her father and mother work, the latter for long hours as a house help after leaving home at 6am, Sonia wanted to be the ray of hope the family desperately looked for.
According to her brother-in-law, Manish, 20, Sonia often visited Connaught Place and other popular spots in the city to shoot her reels and regularly posted them on Instagram. She was planning to also start posting these on YouTube besides getting into vlogging. Manish said, “She wanted to change how we all lived. She was confident that if she were consistent with her social media efforts, she could grow her profile enough for her to get paid opportunities.”

The family learnt about Sonia’s relationship with Sanju only in Aug when mother, Rajani Devi, 50, started noticing that she stopped going out of the house at all and started falling sick frequently. This was because the teenager was five-months’ pregnant by this time. Devi told TOI, “This Oct marked seven months of the pregnancy. We wanted to keep the child, but the boy’s family threatened to kill her.” And despite warnings, Sonia continued seeing Sanju, who lived nearby.
According to neighbours, Sanju was unemployed and lived with his parents and a married elder brother. They allegedly did not approve of his friendship with Sonia, and there were tensions in both the households due to the interfaith relationship. “Sonia tried approaching his family so that they could be married, but she was shunned,” Devi claimed. Locals reported seeing him visit Sonia’s home whenever her parents weren’t at home.
Sonia’s aunt, Phool Kumari, 50, said, “I wish the family had known more about her personal life, but Sonia never let us see her phone. Had we known, we would have advised her properly and taken care of her. Everyone in the family tried convincing her that she should stay at home and not go to the boy’s house, especially after no one in his family was supportive of her.”
Sunita Devi, 40, another relative, added, “When we learnt of her pregnancy, we were upset, yes, but we knew we would take care of her and even get her married if that was what she wanted. Eventually, it was a snuffing out of not one but two lives.”