Abetment of wife’s suicide: Pankaja Munde’s PA remanded in police custody for 3 more days

The 31-year-old accused was arrested on November 24. He was produced before the Bhoiwada court on Thursday, as his earlier police custody ended

MUMBAI: The Bhoiwada metropolitan magistrate court on Thursday extended the police remand of environment minister Pankaja Munde’s personal assistant, arrested for allegedly abetting his wife’s suicide, by three days till Tuesday.

Abetment of wife’s suicide: Pankaja Munde’s PA remanded in police custody for 3 more days

The 31-year-old accused was arrested on November 24, after the family of the deceased dentist alleged foul play and claimed she was murdered. He was produced before the Bhoiwada court on Thursday, as his earlier police custody ended.

The Worli police sought ten days’ custody for the accused, saying they had come across several leads which needed to be probed, including injury marks on him and his deceased wife and recordings of conversations between the couple on his phone.

“We want to confront him with the recordings,” the police told the court. “He and his wife used to fight regularly. We need to find the exact cause of death.”

The police also feared that the accused might tamper with the evidence.

Advocate Mangesh Deshmukh, representing the accused, told the court the injury marks found on his client were old. His client had himself surrendered before the police and was fully co-operating with investigators, he said.

“We have submitted the phone to the police. The recordings were on our phone. If they could be used to frame us, why would we keep them on the phone,” the advocate told the court.

After hearing both sides, the court extended the accused’s police remand till Tuesday.

Munde’s assistant and the dentist had got married on February 7 this year. On November 22, however, the dentist was found hanging inside her 30th floor flat.

The accused told the police that he had an argument with his wife that morning, and had called her several times while he was away during the day, but she did not answer any call. When he returned and knocked on their apartment door, there was no answer, so he went to the refuge area on the 29th floor, climbed up and glimpsed his wife hanging, he claimed.

But the family of the deceased alleged she was murdered and raised suspicions about the claims of the accused, wondering how the accused had climbed to the 30th floor and how he managed to take the deceased’s body alone to BYL Nair Hospital.

According to the FIR, the deceased had sent some photographs and documents to her father on September 29, including a consent letter and declaration of a pregnant woman in a Latur hospital, dated November 16, 2021, wherein Munde’s PA was named as her husband. The deceased had told her father that her husband’s siblings knew about his affair, and her sister-in-law had told her that if she did not accept it, she would arrange for her brother’s second marriage, the FIR said.

The Worli police have booked the accused and his siblings for abetment to suicide and harassment of a married woman under relevant sections of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita.