At around 2 am on January 4, 2015, Sandeep Mahalungkar and his wife had woken up to piercing screams of their Akash. The frantic cries were coming from the hillock behind the house, where Akash, 13, had gone to attend nature's call. Mahalungkar, a farmer, and his wife rushed to the scene only to find their son engulfed in flames. The accident took place at Tokwadi Vasti in Koregaon Khurd village, around 45 km from Pune city, near Chakan in Khed taluka. The case was investigated by Chakan police station, which was at the time under Pune Rural police, and is now under the Pimpri Chinchwad City police. Akash's alleged murder remains an open investigation as of date leaving investigators on a cold trail. The police had exhausted all possible angles as they questioned over 500 people and conducted lie detector tests of some suspects but with no prosecutable evidence against anyone. While the family members and neighbours rushed to douse the fire, Akash, who was studying in Class 7 at the Zilla Parishad school, had sustained over 95 per cent burns. He succumbed to his injuries at the Burn Ward of Sassoon General Hospital in Pune around 6 pm on that day, before giving a dying declaration. He had told the police that two unidentified people had appeared from the dark, poured kerosene on him, and set him on fire. He could not identify them or provide any details about them. The case had sent shockwaves in the area with top police officers and political leaders visiting the village. “We investigated all possible angles. We looked at possible property or financial disputes with the family and personal enmity. We looked at the possibility of Akash having witnessed something he shouldn't have, like a crime or illicit act, and then those people having eliminated him. We looked at the possibility of any disputes at school and among youths in the area,” said an officer who was part of the probe at the time. “We had even questioned some suspects exploring the possibility of this being done due to superstitious beliefs like black magic. We checked criminals on police records from the area. We even checked the unlikely possibility of this being a suicide. One of the hurdles was the lack of technical leads like security cameras or phone data,” added the officer. Sanjaykumar Patil, who was the deputy superintendent of police, Chakan, and is now a Deputy Commissioner of Police with Navi Mumbai police, said, “It was a challenging investigation with all the leads taking us to dead ends. We explored all possibilities and investigated the role of many persons but could not get prosecutable evidence. We had even conducted lie detector tests of some suspects. It remains an open case as of date”. Inspector Pramod Wagh, in charge of Chakan police station, said, “A Final Report was submitted to the court in the case in October 2016. The case remains an open investigation and if leads emerge, the probe will proceed accordingly”. As per the Bombay Police Manual, a Final Report is filed when the case is deemed 'true and is undetected' and 'where there is no clue whatsoever about the culprits or property or where the accused is known but there is no evidence to justify his being sent up to the Magistrate for trial’.
