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Journalism of Courage
“I could hear the growl of a leopard, and that worried me. As I walked some distance, I found her lying face down, unresponsive. There were claw marks on her face, and she was soaked in blood.”
In December last year, Anil Popat Dhawade found his aunt, Latabai Baban Dhawade, lying dead in a sugarcane field in a village in Maharashtra. He told the police that she had been killed by a leopard—a statement that sparked public outrage over the escalating human-wildlife conflict in the area. But soon, as the police investigation progressed, his claims fell through, unravelling a calculated and cold-blooded and planned murder.
As per the initial information gathered by the police and the forest department, Latabai, 50, was found dead in her neighbour’s sugarcane field in Kadethan village of Daund taluka on the afternoon of December 7, 2024. Anil, 40, who was the deputy sarpanch of the village at the time and Latabai’s husband Baban’s nephew, claimed to have found the body.
Anil allegedly told the police that Baban and Latabai were working in their field since morning. Later, Latabai told Baban that she was going to work in the patch with the onion crop, he added. Around 4 pm, Baban told Anil that Latabai had not returned. As they launched a search in the area, they found Latabai dead, Anil allegedly told the police.
“I could hear a leopard growl from a distance as we searched for Latabai…I called her name to check if she responded. But she did not. I realised that she had passed away,” Anil said in his statement.
Though the area was known to witness frequent incidents of human-leopard conflict, forest department officials were not fully convinced about Anil’s version of events. “Forest department officials said that the pugmarks spotted on the scene were inconclusive and the scratch marks on the body of the deceased were inconsistent with those of an animal attack,” a police officer who was a part of the probe recalled.
“There was a lot of public outcry over the human-leopard conflict in the region. We conducted the probe discreetly,” the officer added.
The police suspected something amiss when they found a blood-stained rock at the spot. The initial autopsy report raised other red flags.
After the primary post-mortem analysis, doctors at Sassoon General Hospital opined the cause of death to be “injuries over head and face”. Meanwhile, swabs from the purported claw marks were sent to the Regional Forensic Sciences Laboratory (RFSL) in Nagpur to confirm the presence of animal saliva.
“In February, the RFSL report further strengthened our suspicion. The report stated that no amplifiable DNA was obtained from the exhibit and that the mitochondrial DNA specific to tiger or leopard species was not observed in the exhibit,” the officer said.
“Our team had its ears to the ground, we finally had a workable intelligence that pointed us to one Satilal Valmik More, a labourer working for Anil Dhawade,” he added.
According to the police, More revealed that Anil and Latabai had been having an affair. He told the police that for some days before the murder, she had stopped meeting Anil and had started demanding money. More also allegedly confessed to helping Anil murder her.
“Anil called her to the sugarcane field earlier that day. He gagged her, making her unconscious. He and More then bludgeoned her to death with the rock. Anil then told More that they would say it was a leopard attack,” the officer said.
Anil and More were subsequently arrested for murder with criminal conspiracy.
When contacted, Police Inspector Narayan Deshmukh of Yavat police station, who led the investigation, said, “Anil and More are currently in prison under judicial custody pending trial. A charge sheet was filed against them in the stipulated time frame. We have sent a proposal to the government to appoint a special prosecutor to the case.”
