Mumbai: How a tree census number helped solve a 19-year-old girl’s murder
As per police, the girl’s family was unhappy with their affair as they hailed from different castes due to which she wanted to snap ties with him.
4 min read
Vaibhav Burungale allegedly killed Vaishnavi Babar before dying by suicide“L01-501” — Navi Mumbai Police racked their brains over for several weeks over the code before realising that it was a tree census number, using which on Tuesday they tracked the body of a 19-year-old girl who was murdered on December 12.
According to police, the girl, Vaishnavi Babar, was allegedly murdered by 24-year-old Vaibhav Burungale, with whom she was in a relationship earlier. The code was scribbled across the suicide note of Burungale who allegedly strangulated her with a zip tag and later died by suicide in front of a moving train at Sanpada on December 12.
As per police, the girl’s family was unhappy with their affair as they hailed from different castes, due to which she wanted to snap ties with him. Burungale suspected the girl was seeing another man and decided to kill her before committing suicide, they said. While the girl was studying in SIES college, Burungale had studied up to Class 12 and was working.
On December 12, the Navi Mumbai police received a missing persons complaint from the girl’s family. The same day, the police found the body of Burungale at the Sanpada railway tracks. Police also found a suicide note in his phone which said he had murdered the girl. However, for a month police were not able to trace the body of the girl.
Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Milind Bharambe set up a special task force to investigate the case under DCP Amit Kale. The police team went through the suicide note they had found. Based on call records and technical investigation, the police found that the couple had gone to the Kharghar hill area on the day she went missing.
Soon a team led by senior inspector Atul Aher of the Anti Human Trafficking Unit of the Navi Mumbai police started spending hours in the area looking for the body. Police took the help of voluntary rescuers from Lonavala and collaborated with the Fire Brigade, Cidco, and Forest Department to search the woman’s body. Drones were also used.
Aher said that in the suicide note, he had mentioned L01 – 501 as the place where the body had been dumped. “I googled for the code and we tried various combinations but we could not figure out what the code word stood for.”
Eventually the police had a breakthrough after they consulted the forest department that told them it was the tree census number. The number led the police to the spot where the girl’s body was spotted lying in bushes in a dumping ground in Kalamboli area, around 6 km from Kharghar, an officer said.
The body was identified based on the clothing the woman was wearing when she had left for college, including the wristwatch and the ID card.
An officer said that in Burungale’s mobile phone, Burungale writing to himself, tells the girl that he had “tested” the tag on himself before strangling her and it would not hurt much. He further told her that they would be together in their next life.
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