It was around 10.30 pm. Sarika Chavan’s family had finished dinner, and she was washing utensils in her kitchen when their dog started barking, all of a sudden, looking at the nearby stream. Sarika asked her husband, Vishwajeet, to check. He picked up a torch and stepped out of their isolated house on the outskirts of Yavat town in Maharashtra. Moments later, her husband’s scream pierced the darkness. What followed would leave the Chavans reeling—one family member would be murdered, three others grievously injured. The investigation into the March 5 incident would lead the police to four men who hailed from Uttar Pradesh, all of whom would be arrested within 12 hours of the crime. When 34-year-old Sarika looked in the direction of the scream, she saw Vishwajeet lying on the ground, with a large rock lying next to him. As she watched in horror, a group of men, armed with wooden sticks, were walking towards the house. Sarika raised an alarm and immediately called her father-in-law. She then rushed inside, scooped up her son, Advik, and locked both of them inside the bedroom for safety. Later, Sarika would tell the police that she could hear her mother-in-law, Ujjwala, and sister-in-law, Prachi, screaming and guessed that they were being brutally attacked. In panic, she called a neighbour on the phone and pleaded for help. At one point, she heard someone banging on the door of the bedroom, but held on, whispering to her terrified son, urging him to stay quiet. When the neighbours arrived and opened the door, Sarika stepped out. In the drawing room of the house, she found Ujjwala and Prachi lying unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood with severe head injuries. Her father-in-law, Shashikant, had also suffered a severe head injury but was conscious. Sarika rushed towards Vishwajeet, who was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Vishwajeet, Ujjwala and Prachi were rushed to a local hospital. While Vishwajeet was pronounced dead, Ujjwala and Prachi required treatment in the Intensive Care Unit for their severe head injuries. The probe begins When the Pune rural police team from Yavat and Local Crime Branch (LCB) launched a joint probe, the family raised suspicion about Prachi’s estranged husband. Their families also had a history of conflict. However, the investigation took a completely different turn after the probe revealed that the attackers had fled with gold ornaments from the house. Two teams from Yavat police station and five from the LCB began working on various angles. The probe revealed that when the accused were fleeing, two villagers chased them and saw them running towards the railway tracks. As the police scoured the route, they found an abandoned bag. In it, the police found clothes, a jacket with ‘University Delhi’ written, and some other crucial leads. “The contents of the bag and the inscription on the jacket gave us concrete leads about the suspects. Further analysis of the technical leads, cross-referenced with clues from the bag and inputs from a confidential source, led to the information that the suspects had gone to the Pune railway station area,” an officer who was part of the probe said. “Our teams started searching the trains going towards Delhi and northern India in general, and the places from where the buses went. At a bus stop for private buses in the Gunjan Chowk area in Yerawada, we intercepted two men. Their questioning led us to two more of their accomplices, who had gone back to the area of the incident to search for the bag,” the officer added. The police subsequently arrested four men, identified as Salman Shaikh, 28, Momin Shaikh, 45, Rawatsingh Tomar, 26, and Gulshan Jahangir Khan, 25, who hailed from Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh. According to the police, the four accused had recently started working at a jaggery-making unit not far from the Chavans’ house. All four suspects were arrested in less than 12 hours.
