The last Facebook post she ever made was a simple caption under a photo of herself at an Indian wedding on the island. She was dressed in a sparkling red and gold lehenga, smiling, and she had asked her friends to rate her look from one to ten. She joked that she had turned into an Indian woman. Her family liked the post.
Her mother commented with heart emojis. A week later, on the morning of August 17th, 2024, she told her roommate Elena that she was stepping out to meet someone. She said she would be back in a few hours. Elena watched her leave the building and get into a blue Toyota that was waiting outside.
Zelia wore a light blue and white summer dress and carried a small purse. The security camera on the street caught her getting into the car. She was never seen alive again. Zelia Shamagulova was thirty years old.
She was born in a small town in Bashkortostan, a republic of Russia, where her father worked as an engineer and her mother taught English for over thirty years. She grew up with her older brother in a home her relatives described as loving and without conflict. At school, she was known as the cheerful, kind girl that no one had a bad word to say about. She graduated with a gold medal, the highest academic distinction in Russia, then moved to Chelyabinsk to study international relations.
She edited the university newspaper, was named the region’s journalist of the year in 2014, and carried the torch for the Sochi Winter Olympics. Later, she became an HR manager and career consultant, then started teaching personnel management at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations. Her colleagues described her as dedicated and compassionate. In late 2023, she left her job to travel the world alone.
She spent two months in Bali, then went to Kuala Lumpur, then to Cape Town. She attended the AfrikaBurn festival in the desert and even went on a hot air balloon ride. In the spring of 2024, she traveled to Mauritius with her roommate Elena. They settled into an apartment in Flic-en-Flac, a small beachside town.
She had planned to stay through the end of summer, then fly to Madagascar on September 1st. She kept posting photos of markets and beaches and green landscapes. Her days were filled with swimming, learning French, and working online. In mid-June she wrote a long post about her new life.
She said she had stopped working for her company in April, taken a break from all projects, and gone to the desert for the May holidays. She lived without a schedule, without a professional role for the first time. She compared her Google calendar to something that finally belonged to a normal human, not a machine that did not even need a tea break. She said she had finished all her classes and coursework, was getting to know the local culture, and had started learning French because so many people spoke it there.
She said space for ideas was finally opening up in her head, space for a new leap to a new level of life. She ended the post with the words: “It will be very interesting, primarily for me. ”
By that summer, she had been chatting with a man she met on Tinder. He was a twenty-nine-year-old IT engineer who also lived on the island.
His name was Priyaver Singh Sunder. They exchanged messages often, and local reports later claimed he had told friends and relatives he was in love with her and planned to propose. But Zelia’s own posts said she was not committed to anyone, that she was focused on her travels. Her family knew the man’s family slightly and saw no reason to be afraid of him.
That August morning, the plan was simple. Priyaver was going to drive Zelia to meet someone in Curepipe, a town about fifteen kilometers away. But after she got into that blue car, hours passed with no messages, no updates, no calls. By evening, her friends grew worried.
They called her phone. There was no response. Then, suddenly, messages began coming from her phone, but they did not sound like her. They said she was choosing to disappear.
They said she was cutting ties with her family and did not want to be contacted anymore. Elena and the others did not believe it. Her aunt told reporters that Zelia was very attached to her mother; she would never disappear like that. If she could, she would have gotten in touch.
On August 18th, Elena filed a missing person report with the police in Flic-en-Flac. The Russian embassy in Port Louis issued an alert and offered support. Priyaver was the obvious person of interest. The police pulled the CCTV footage and matched it with his car’s license plate.
They detained him for questioning and noticed he had deleted all of his messages with Zelia. He told them he had dropped her off in Curepipe by noon and had not seen her since. He said they had met that morning and that by 1:15 p. m.
he left her near his workplace. But the area he mentioned had no surveillance cameras at all. There was no footage to prove or disprove his story. He said he had gone to pick up his son afterwards.
The police released him after that round of questioning, but they kept his car for further checks. Back at the apartment, Elena and friends searched hospitals and clinics, thinking Zelia might have been hurt and could not reach anyone. There was nothing. Her family in Russia held onto hope.
Late that same evening, Priyaver was brought back in for a second interrogation. The police revealed that Zelia’s blood had been found in his car. That is when he broke down and confessed. The lead investigator later said the motive was betrayal.
Priyaver claimed Zelia had cheated on him because she was interested in someone else. He said he was deeply in love, that he had planned to marry her, and that he could not handle what he believed was infidelity. So instead of a scenic drive, he led her into the forest and stabbed her. There was no evidence that they had ever been in a committed relationship.
Priyaver later claimed he had known Zelia for a very long time and had introduced her to his family. But according to Elena, their connection had started only after Zelia arrived in Mauritius, just over two months before her death. Authorities charged him with premeditated murder. There was no history of mental illness or violence in his past.
He was described as an ordinary IT worker with no criminal background. On August 21st, five days after Zelia disappeared, Priyaver led investigators to a location in La Marie, in central-west Mauritius, a short drive from where she had been staying. There, in a shallow grave, they found her body. She had been stabbed several times.
The wounds were concentrated around her neck and chest. In a particularly disturbing detail, her tongue had been cut out. The act was reportedly done to prevent her from making noise. She was buried completely naked, a detail that made investigators wonder if it was simply an act of violence or a calculated attempt to degrade her, or even to erase physical evidence that could link him to the scene.
The grave itself was not well concealed. It was shallow, not far from homes, in a spot where people passed regularly. Police believed the original plan might have involved a more hidden location, or even dismemberment to move the body discreetly, but something had shifted. Perhaps the murder happened in a moment of uncontrollable rage and, once it was done, he panicked and dumped her in the closest spot he could find.
Or perhaps he had a plan that something interrupted, forcing him to improvise. Either way, the scene looked like a rushed attempt to hide what he had done. Zelia’s parents, Zulfia and Samat, and her brother Teimer traveled to Moscow to take care of arrangements. Her aunt Gulnaz spoke to reporters and said Zulfia was broken by her daughter’s death and had lost the will to live.
The family demanded that the man responsible rot in prison, promising they would not rest until justice was served. On August 28th, Zelia’s body was returned to Russia. Her mother wrote on social media: “My daughter, my soul, my pride. I will always love you.
” Her father added: “Our beloved daughter, you were our support and hope. ” Her brother told a reporter: “My parents are heartbroken, but they are still strong. Many people are helping us because my sister was such a kind person. She was the kindest, purest, and most open person I have ever known.
We were supposed to see each other again soon. She had no intention of staying there. ”
The trial against Priyaver Singh Sunder is still ongoing. He is innocent until proven guilty, but if convicted he could face sixty years or more in prison.
Mauritius does not allow the death penalty, so that would be the most severe possible sentence, one that would likely mean spending the rest of his life behind bars. Days before her murder, Zelia made one final post on her Instagram account. It read: “Choose happiness every day.
” She should still be here today, traveling the world, going on adventures with Elena, and being happy.
