IT professional was ‘raped and killed’ on Monday

‘Body of raped techie lay in Karnataka canal for 2 days’. Father of the 22-year-old victim says no one bothered to remove the body

THE pain of losing his daughter was worsened by the apathy of Karnataka Police in handling her body, alleged the father of an IT professional who was allegedly raped and murdered by two men — one of them her friend.
The 22-year-old victim, a Nagpur resident living in Mumbai, was allegedly raped and killed at Ambernath on Monday. The accused allegedly stuffed her body in a suitcase and dumped it in a canal in Karnataka. Later, the accused Nilesh Patil (24) and Akshay Valode (25) stopped at Ratnagiri and surrendered before police.

Speaking to The Indian Express, the girl’s father, an assistant sub inspector with the Nagpur police, said: “The body of my daughter was found in a canal in Karnataka two days back, but no one bothered to remove it from there. The body was removed from the canal around 12.15 am on Wednesday in my presence. Even I am a policeman and whenever a body is found, we immediately send it to the mortuary. Here, no one bothered to do that. It was heartbreaking to see her body in a rotten condition. I got the body back to Nagpur because my family members wanted a closure.”

According to the police, the victim and Patil, also hailing from Nagpur, had studied engineering together. On Sunday, Patil and his friend Nilesh Khobragade drove in the latter’s car from Nagpur to Pune, where they met the victim. They told the victim that they would drop her at her Mumbai residence where she had been living for the past two months, said the police. At night, however, they halted at Valode’s Ambernath residence on the outskirts of Mumbai.

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Later, Patil and Valode allegedly took turns to rape the victim and later murdered her when she threatened to complain to police.

At the time of the crime, Khobragade was not at Valode’s home. On his return, the accused allegedly insisted on leaving for Goa. After reaching Belagavi, Patil and Valode dumped the suitcase in a drain line. When confronted by Khobragade, they confessed to raping and murdering the victim, said police.

The trio then surrendered before Ratnagiri police and a zero FIR was registered on Khobragade’s statement. The case has now been transferred to Thane police.

The two accused have been booked under section 376 (2)(g) (gang rape), 302 (murder), 201 (destroying evidence), and 34 (common intention) of the IPC, while Khobragade, in whose car the woman’s body was transported, has been booked for disposing the body.

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Thane DCP (zone 4) Ankit Goyal said: “The accused were produced before a local court in Ratnagiri where we have obtained a transit remand.They should reach Thane by Thursday night after which we will produce them before the court for custody. Once we interrogate them, there will be some clarity on the sequence of events.”

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