MUMBAI: Two months after a 35-year-old man from Kurla had been reported ‘missing’, his wife her sister have been detained, along with four other relatives, for allegedly killing him and burying the body near the airport.
The corpse is likely to be exhumed on Friday, said sources in the police. No one had been arrested until the time of filing this report on Thursday evening.
The man, Deepak Sangle, had been reported ‘missing’ in June. His sister had lodged a missing person’s complaint at Vinobha Bhave Nagar police station in Kurla. Sangle’s wife had also accompanied her sister-in-law at that time. Sangle had a few criminal cases registered against his name, said the police. The crime branch (unit 5) had started a parallel investigation in the case.
Crime branch officials said they recently got a tip-off that Sangle did not get along too well with his wife and in-laws. The police scanned through his cellphone call details in order to trace the location he was last found at and calls made to him. From this, they also interrogated certain people known to him.
Among these were Sangle’s wife, her sister and a few others who were questioned separately. The replies that they got had inconsistencies, said a police officer. When they further interrogated the wife, she admitted to having killed him along with her relatives. Sangle used to harass and threaten her over petty issues, said an officials.
The police said that the wife informed them that he accused her of infidelity and often beat her up. Her family members too were fed up of the harassment and they hatched a conspiracy and killed him and buried the body close to the wall of the international terminal of the city airport, said an official.
“We have detained some suspects and their interrogation is going on. Once it is clear how they murdered him and disposed of the body, we will arrest them,” said a senior police official.
Officials of the crime branch said they handed over these suspects to Vinobha Bhave Nagar police station who were in the process of registering a murder case.
Sources said that the police have intimated the officials of the state forensic science laboratory at Kalina and a team from the laboratory will accompany police officials to the scene of crime to exhume the body on Friday.
