Achilling, blind murder case that rocked the Navi Mumbai Police Commissionerate has been cracked following a pan-India technical investigation.
The Panvel Taluka Police have arrested a 27-year-old brick supplier who allegedly brutally bludgeoned his lover to death with an iron rod, stuffed her body into a Honda City, and set it ablaze using petrol in a remote forest area to erase all evidence of the crime.
The horror came to light on April 11, when Mahadu Gopal Patil, a 56-year-old local police constable of Chinchavali village, was alerted by a farmer named Posha Sitaram Patil. The farmer was heading to his fields when he noticed a badly charred human corpse hidden in the thick bushes of the Rajmati forest zone, a property belonging to the forest department near the Chinchavali-Vakdi village border.
Upon receiving the information, the Panvel Taluka Police registered and 238 for causing the disappearance of evidence under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023. Because the victim`s body was completely burnt, there were absolutely no documents, clothing, or immediate clues available to identify her, making it a hundred percent blind murder case for the investigators.
Under the direct guidance of Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Milind Bharambe and Joint Commissioner of Police Deepak Sakore, multiple specialised teams were formed to crack the case. Investigators scanned dozens of CCTV cameras across the region, combed nearby villages, and sent out a detailed description of the recovered jewelry to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) across Maharashtra and the rest of the country.
The breakthrough came when Police Constable Sunil Kudale looked into the missing persons` registers across the neighboring districts and matched the physical build and specific ornaments found on the victim with those of a missing person report filed at the ,The woman was identified as 30-year-old Anitadevi Bhagwan Rajbhar, a resident of Phadkepada in Mumbra-Diva, and the crucial clues that cracked the case were her ring, a sacred thread on her wrist, a nose pin, and her earrings.
Once the victim was identified, the police activated their technical surveillance and discovered through call logs that Rajbhar was constantly in touch with a single individual named Karan Namdev Patil, a resident of Shilphata. When the police initially summoned Patil for questioning, his refusal to show up raised their suspicion, and a deeper dive into his mobile location confirmed he was with the victim right before she vanished.
Accused kills woman with iron rod, burns body using petrol from car tank
,tracked him down, and took him into custody, where he was interrogated and allegedly confessed to the gruesome crime.
According to the police, Patil and Rajbhar were in a relationship, but conflict brewed when she allegedly insisted on marriage. Desperate to rid himself of the relationship, Patil hatched a sinister plot and picked up Rajbhar in his Honda City car on April 6, driving her to an isolated location. Inside the vehicle, he allegedly struck her with an iron rod on the head, killing her. He then drove the car with her corpse to the Chinchavali village forest border, siphoned petrol out of his fuel tank, doused her body, and set it on fire before fleeing.
Patil was arrested on Monday, and the ,which has remanded him to police custody until Friday.