Father kills 9-year-old daughter with chainsaw for altering her brother’s marksheet

“On Sunday evening, the accused used a chainsaw to kill his daughter. After slitting her throat, he wrapped the body in a sari and torched the house in a cold-blooded attempt to erase all traces of what he had done,” Pawar said.

The incident took place on Sunday evening at Deulgaon Raje village in Daund taluka. “The girl’s father, Shantaram Chavan, 33, along with a woman, has been arrested under Sections 103 (murder), 238 (causing disappearance of evidence), and 3(5) (shared criminal intent) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS),” Pawar said.

“The accused’s son had been mocking his younger sister over their exam results on Saturday. What started as a petty squabble between the two siblings quickly turned into a sore point for the girl,” Pawar said.

After the fire broke out, Chavan reportedly put on an act, publicly claiming the blaze was accidental and that his daughter had been trapped inside. However his account of the incident did not hold up for long.

“A tip-off led us to suspect that the fire was not accidental – that the man had, in fact, murdered his own daughter and staged the blaze to cover his tracks,” Pawar said.

Police recovered the girl’s partially burnt body from the charred remains of the house and sent it to Sassoon General Hospital in Pune for a DNA test to establish her identity. Chavan and the woman, who allegedly helped him conceal the crime, have since been taken into custody, and further investigation is on.