A gruesome murder-suicide revealed

Man killed 19-year-old girlfriend, then jumped in front of a train last month; crime revealed when cops find her decomposed body in Kharghar hills

NAVI MUMBAI: An obsessive 24-year-old man who fretted about the fidelity of a 19-year-old woman he was in love with, strangled her and threw her body near Kharghar hills before jumping to his death on the railway track on December 12.

(Right) Vaishnavi Manohar Baba and Vaibhav Burangale were neighbours in Kalamboli and shared a teenage infatuation. (HT PHOTO)

The gruesome details of the murder-suicide came to life when the police found Kalamboli resident Vaishnavi Manohar Baba’s body on Tuesday nearly five weeks later. Vaishanavi was a student of SIES college in Sion, and Vaibhav Burangale were neighbours in Kalamboli and shared a teenage infatuation. However, when the two families came to know of this, they opposed it staunchly, and soon after Vaibhav’s family shifted their residence.

Vaishnavi and Vaibhav, however, continued to remain in touch. On December 12, Vaishnavi left for college like any other day but when Vaishnavi did not reach home by late evening and her phone remained unreachable her family registered a missing complaint with the Kalamboli police at around 9 pm. Meanwhile, on the same day at around 5 pm, a case of accidental death was registered with the Vashi railway police after Vaibhav jumped into the path of an oncoming local train near Juinagar railway station.

“Before jumping, Vaibhav threw his phone beside the tracks,” said police inspector Atul Aher from the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU). “When we switched it on, we found a message that read: ‘Whoever finds this phone should hand it over to either the police or my family.” On further investigation, the police also found a handwritten suicide note of around eight pages with a code at the end that said ‘LO1-501’.”

“From the suicide note, it was evident that he had killed Vaibhavi, but the location was not known,” said deputy commissioner of police (crime branch) Amit Kale. “Apart from the suicide note, we found a ‘Death Note’ typed in the Notes section of his phone. It was evident from the chats and the note that the girl had been ignoring him for the last few months and had also blocked his number briefly, indicating some issues between them.”

Kale said the content of the note and the chat indicate that an upset Vaibhav began to doubt Vaishnavi’s fidelity and he warned her with dire consequences going to the extent of imagining a scenario in which they live together in another world.“This is when he planned to kill her and himself,” said Kale.

The Kalamboli police investigated the missing person’s case initially and on January 6, a Special Investigating Team was formed of the Kalamboli police and AHTU. The police found CCTV footage of the couple together outside SIES College, at GTB Nagar railway station and then at Kharghar railway station. The call data records of both confirmed that they were last together at Kharghar Hills.

“We saw footage of both going towards Kharghar Hill, but Vaibhav returned alone,” said Kale. “We suspected that whatever had happened to Vaishnavi must have happened on the hill.” A voluntary hikers group called Shivdurg, a rescue team from Lonavala, CIDCO’s fire brigade and a forest department team together started the search operation on Kharghar Hill.

“We knew the code mentioned in the letter meant something, but we could not understand what it was,” said Aher. “We even googled but in vain. When we spoke about it to the forest department, they told us that the trees on the hill had been labelled with numbers, and LO1-501 was a tree. We located it on Tuesday and found Vaishnavi’s body around six feet away. Since it was over a month since the incident, the body was completely decomposed. The watch she was wearing, and her college identity card helped identify her.” The investigation also revealed that Vaibhav had strangulated Vaishnavi with a self-locking zip cable tie used to secure check-in baggage at airports and some shopping malls.

The ‘death note’ written in part-English and part-Marathi read like a letter to Vaishnavi, and its last editing time stamp was December 12 at 12pm. ‘Death Note Vaibhav 1998, Vaishnavi 2005. Death reason – Finally we got married in 2023 and we both died accidentally together at the year 2023. Saddest de(a)th ever in history. I killed my love and then I finished myself,’ (sic), the note said.

In Marathi, the note said that Vaibhav loved Vaishnavi unconditionally and did not expect her to “betray” him. It added that if she continued to betray him, he would post their intimate videos and pictures online and let everyone know about her. In the last paragraph, he mentioned that he would strangle her to death. “I will strangulate you baby and you will feel horrible for a few minutes. I tried it on myself, and it was a horrible feeling. But trust me, it will only be for some time, and don’t worry, I am here for you. We will soon meet in another world,” said the Death Note.

Asked specifically whether Vaibhav had stalked Vaishnavi when she was a minor, Aher said that the investigation so far had not shown any evidence to that effect. “The chats on his phone show that they were in a relationship for five years,” he said. “There were explicit videos which they had mutually decided to show if the families forced them to get married to someone else.”