Son-in-law, 4 others held for ‘man’s murder’ in Nandurbar

An officer said Marathe’s wife had reported him as missing on Thursday at Shahada police station in Nandurbar. On Saturday, the local police found the deceased’s charred body, following which the missing persons complaint was converted into a murder case and the police began a probe in the matter.

An officer said that during the probe, the police identified four persons involved in the crime who had run off to Mumbai. Accordingly, they alerted the Mumbai police that the accused had come to the city. A team from unit XI of the Mumbai crime branch led by senior inspector Vinayak Chavan started to look for the accused, after they received information that they were holed up in Gorai.

On Monday, the police managed to apprehend four suspects from Gorai as they were preparing to flee from there. Two of the arrested accused were identified as Nilesh Patil, (25) and Lucky Kishore Birare, (19) and the other two were minors.

When crime branch officers interrogated them, they said Sonar had given them a contract of Rs three lakh to kill Marathe. They said the main accused had also asked them to take a video of them murdering him and burning his body. The police recovered the video from their mobile phone along with Rs 45,000.

An officer said that based on this, they alerted the Nandurbar police which then placed Sonar under arrest. The police found Sonar and Marathe’s daughter had a love marriage a year ago. However, whenever they had fights, Marathe interfered in it and would threaten Sonar.

Eventually his wife left him and later his father suffered a heart attack. Sonar blamed Marathe for this and hence decided to take revenge and put out a contract to kill him, police said. An officer said that the accused will be handed over to Nandurbar police as the case was registered there.