Mentally ill stalker made the life of a former Miss Chesterfield an “utter misery”

Dhawal Chaudhary, 27, “destroyed” former Miss England Stephanie Hill’s life, Judge Shaun Smith QC told Derby Crown Court.

Over a two-year period between 2018 and 2020 the obsessed student subjected her to a “torrent of attention” - bombarding her and her partner with bizarre messages.

The court heard Indian national told the terrified beauty queen - now in her mid-late twenties he planned to travel to the UK where they would move in together and have children.

In July last year he was arrested at Heathrow Airport following and eventually detained at Nottingham’s Wells Centre - where he appeared via videolink to be sentenced today.

Sarah Slater, prosecuting, told the court how in 2018 Miss Hill travelled to India for work - where she became known to the defendant due to her “large” social media presence.

She said: “He started to contact her and it was all fairly normal but then she started to receive strange messages because she was not responding fast enough.

“He started to send her explicit, sexual messages with diagrams showing what he wanted to do with her - he sent her messages about the grandchildren he wanted them to have.”

One chilling message read “it’s not rape, just love”, the court heard, and Chaudhary later told Miss Hill he was planning to move to the UK to study, where they would “get a flat together”.

He set up “50” different social media accounts to message Miss Hill.

However he also targeted her partner Daniel Harper - creating an Instagram group between the three of them and “bombarding” Mr Harper with messages.

He also set up an Instagram page called “Daniel Harper Killers” with the subtitle “we will come and kill Daniel Harper if he doesn’t leave Stephanie Hill alone”.

In June 2020 Chaudhary began tagging Miss Hill in Instagram posts - which made her realise he was now in the UK studying at university as he intended, which is when she reported him to the police.

Dr Y Saleem, a consultant forensic psychologist at Nottingham’s Wells Centre told Judge Smith he believed Chaudhary could be suffering from erotomania - a delusion in which a person believes that another person is in love with them.

Although he could not be sure of the diagnosis he added there was no doubt Chaudhary suffered with a disorder requiring hospital treatment.

Judge Smith told Chaudhary: “What you did over a period of time, you made the life of Stephanie Hill and her partner a complete and utter misery.

“For that period you destroyed her life - she had to adapt her life entirely to cope with the torrent of attention you were giving to her to cope - and she could not cope.

“Eventually she was scared to go out and was constantly looking over her shoulder - she changed from a professional, confident person to, in her own words, a ‘pathetic’ person.

“She doesn’t trust anybody now - it will take her a long time to get herself back if she ever gets herself back to the person she was. That’s down to you and it’s very serious.”

Chaudhary, admitted stalking involving serious alarm or distress and harassment.

He was handed a hospital order under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act and a restraining order in respect of Miss Hill and her partner.

Stephanie Hill – a former Miss Chesterfield – was crowned Miss England in 2017, representing Hope Valley at the time.

During the same year the former Peak District model, who now lives in Sheffield, went on to compete in China for the Miss World title.

She was placed second runner-up overall out of 118 candidates.

At the time of her win in 2017 she had secured a place on a Master’s degree in translational oncology at the University of Sheffield medical school and hoped to go on and become a clinical scientist.

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