The Bombay high court (HC) on Thursday dismissed a petition filed by a suspected serial killer from Satara, seeking an investigation by a special team headed by a senior officer of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), into the alleged spate of killings at Wai tehsil in Satara.
Additional public prosecutor Shahaji Shinde said the division bench of justice BP Dharmadhikari and justice NR Borkar dismissed the petition filed by the accused, Santosh Gulabaro Pol, after discovering that the plea was “nothing but an attempt to delay his trial” for purportedly killing six people.
Pol, 44, in his petition filed through advocate Ashok Kawchale, had claimed that 36 murders had taken place in Wai tehsil in 2016 and not six, as claimed by the police. He sought a CBI probe on the ground that the police had suppressed several murders.
According to Pol’s petition, on June 15, 2016, Wai police had registered a report after a resident, Mangal Jedhe, went missing. Pol was arrested after a preliminary investigation into the case revealed that the woman was in contact with him a few days before she went missing.
Two months on, after Pol’s interrogation, the police probed the vicinity around his farm at Dhom, about 40 km away from the district headquarters at Satara. The police realised the gravity of the crimes, purportedly committed by Pol and his accomplice, Jyoti Mandhare, after they unearthed six bodies from the farm. The police suspected that Pol had administered an anaesthetic to the victims and then buried their bodies in his farm after murdering them.
However, Pol’s petition stated that nine bodies were recovered from the farm, but for reasons best known to the police, their report only mentioned six bodies. Pol also claimed that after it became clear that the victims were administered the anaesthetic drug succinylcholine, the police raided a local hospital on August 23, 2016, and recovered a large stock of the drug. However, there was no mention of the police’s seizure on record, Pol’s petition stated.
But the bench was not convinced and accepted the Shinde’s arguments that Pol’s petition were an attempt to delay his trial and dismissed the plea.
