Twenty years ago, a ghastly discovery of decomposed remains of bodies by the villagers of Nandos in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district unearthed a sordid tale of greed, deceit and murder. On December 20, 2003, the then superintendent of police (SP) received anonymous letters and phone calls informing him about villagers spotting decomposed bodies on the hillocks and adjoining agricultural lands of Nandos village. The police conducted a search operation with the help of villagers and recovered several dead bodies, along with the belongings of the victims. To identify the victims, information regarding missing complaints received at all police stations in Maharashtra was assimilated and the relatives of some of the deceased were contacted. Their blood samples were taken to conduct DNA tests to prove their identities. The subsequent probe led the police to four men in their twenties who allegedly lured the deceased into the jungle near Nandos village, promising to turn them into millionaires overnight through a magical ‘money shower’. Santosh Manohar Chavan, Amit Ashok Shinde, Yogesh Madhukar Chavan and Mahesh Dhanaji Shinde were later arrested for killing 10 people, including two children, over two months. It was Santosh who performed the ‘magic spell’, the police said. On May 6, 2011, the Bombay High Court confirmed the death penalty for the four men and commended the villagers, “If the police were not alerted on locating the dead bodies at the plateau, the accused would have continued their activities with equal determinations so as to make money by murdering innocent people by luring them in the name of multiplying the wealth by the magic of shower of money.” The Supreme Court, however, commuted their sentence to life imprisonment on February 27, 2014. As per the prosecution, the victims belonging to varied professions were asked to bring cash, ranging from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh, and gunny bags to carry the money that would multiply after the ‘magic programme’ so that villagers in Nandos would not suspect them. The probe revealed that the victims were brought from their towns in public transport buses with tickets bought under false names. Their stay was arranged at hotels or lodges in Kankavli or Malwan under fake identities. They were then transported by an auto rickshaw to the Nandos panchayat office, from where they were made to walk to the hillock of the plateau, a secluded place to perform rituals/pooja, the police stated. The accused ensured that victims did not leave any of their belongings in the hotel, the police said. The victims were robbed, and during the ‘rituals’, they were shot or beaten mercilessly to death, the police added. As per police, one Shankar Sarage from Goregaon and Hemant Thakare from Ratnagiri were killed on September 25 that year. On October 30, four people from Pune, including Vijaysinh Dudhe, Dadasaheb Chavan, Sanjay Gavare and Vinayak (Bala) Pisal from Badlapur were murdered. On November 14, a family of four from Vashi, including couple Kerubhai and Anita Mali and their two minor sons, were murdered. The high court had observed that the crimes were committed in a “beastly, barbaric and grotesque manner”, the accused exhibited “their hunger for money and human blood and life” and the incident “shocked the collective conscience of the society”. While commuting the death sentence to life term, the Supreme Court in 2014 noted that at the time of the commission of the offence, the four accused were between 23 to 29 years of age and belonged to the deprived section of the population, therefore it was “possible that being young, they had a yearning for quick money, which led to the crimes in question”.
