Journalism of Courage
A month after Sunita Bhandari (40) was found murdered and buried in her own hut in Sade Satra Nali slum area,the Hadapsar police arrested her paramour,Ajay Shinde (35),Thursday night for the alleged murder. Police investigations have revealed that Shinde had been working as a helper with a company under a different name and had left the job a week before he murdered Bhandari.
On February 25,Bhandaris body was excavated from her hut after her 18-year-old daughter Komal Naik found it during her search for her mother.
Bhandari had gone missing about two weeks before her body was found. She had separated from her husband and was staying with Shinde since last two years.
After Bhandari went missing,her daughter had kept asking Shinde for her whereabout. He kept lying to her that she was ill. Pandharinath Mandhare,senior police inspector with Hadapsar police station,said,The daughter of the victim had named Shinde in her complaint. We found that he was working at a company under a fake name of Suryakant Bhosale. A man with same name and address was staying in Manjari but did not know Shinde. Hence we suspected Shinde had got photocopies from some of Bhosales relatives.
A decisive turn in the investigation came when Santosh Mohite,a constable with the Hadapsar police station,got a tip-off from his informants that Shinde was staying in Dhanori with the same changed name. Shinde was arrested from Dhanori on Thursday at 8.30 pm after a trap was laid for him, said Sanjay Jadhav,deputy commissioner of police (Zone IV).
Shinde was produced before the cantonment court and was remanded in police custody till April 8.
