Bollywood actress seized, beheaded

MANILA, Philippines - An aspiring young Bollywood actress was murdered by two fellow actors she befriended on the set of her latest film.

Police are investigating the murder of Meenakshi Thapar, 26, who was kidnapped and beheaded last month by Amit Jaiswal and his lover Preeti Surin in exchange for ransom, according to the New York Daily News.

Thapar met the pair on the set of Madhur Bhandarkar’s yet-to-be-released film “Heroine,” where she had a bit part.

According to police, Jaiswal and Surin lured Thapar to go on a trip with them to Gorakhpur, a small town known for its Buddhist temple near the Nepalese border.

The duo reportedly held Thapar hostage and threatened her mother that they would force Thapar to do pornography if their demands were not met.

Her mother is believed to have paid 60,000 rupees (about $1,150) for her release, but she never saw her daughter again.

Instead, according to The Daily Telegraph, the couple strangled and beheaded Thapar in a hotel and her body was hacked into pieces and thrown in a water tank.

In a final act of callous depravity, her head was thrown from a moving bus on its way to Mumbai.

Mumbai crime branch policemen recovered the body from Surin’s house in Allahabad on Wednesday.

Jaiswal and Surin were caught in possession of Thapar’s mobile phone SIM and they admitted the crime to the Mumbai police after their arrest.

They said they were taken in by Thapar’s pretentious stories about her “affluent family.”

Jaiswal and Surin believed that Thapar was from a wealthy family because her lifestyle, despite not landing a big film role, belied the fact that she actually came from a middle-class background.

“They plotted to kidnap her for a ransom of 1,500,000 rupees (about $21,800) and kill her after the payment was made,” a police officer said.

Thapar was a struggling actress who played a minor role in last year’s horror film “404” and appeared in some TV commercials.

“They wanted to extort money from her family. They have confessed to the crime. She was strangulated in a hotel and her body was hacked into pieces and thrown in a water tank. They threw her head from a moving bus while traveling back to Mumbai,” a detective leading the investigation told The Daily Telegraph.