Four arrested in Nanavare couple suicide get bail

Four persons accused of abetting the suicide of a couple have been granted bail due to the failure of the police to provide evidence.

The four persons accused of abetting the suicide of Nandkumar Nanavare and his wife secured bail from a Kalyan court on Tuesday due to the Thane crime branch’s failure to provide evidence. All four—Kamlesh Nikam, Shashikant Sathe, Naresh Gaikwad and Ganpati Kamble—are PAs of political leaders.

Four arrested in Nanavare couple suicide get bail

Nanavare and his wife jumped to their death from the terrace of their Ulhasnagar bungalow on August 1. The suicide came into the media spotlight after Dhananjay Nanavare, the brother of the deceased, sliced off one of his fingers on camera, and declared that he would continue to chop off body parts and send them to home minister Devendra Fadnavis till his brother got justice. The four accused were arrested after Dhananjay’s shocking video went viral. They were produced in court twice and sent to judicial custody after 11 days in police custody.

Dhananjay, who returned to his village in Phaltan to reopen his shop which has been shut for the past one month and is his only source of income, said he would challenge the bail order in a higher court. “I am running from pillar to post to get justice for my brother because it is important for our survival too,” he said. “If I fail, the accused will get another chance to harass our family, and the only option will be to end our lives.”

Dhananjay said he had faith that the Thane police and investigating team would “do something to get us justice”. “The accused got enough time to destroy the evidence because of which the police investigation slowed down,” he said. According to sources, the investigation team had CCTV recordings of the office of one of the accused where Nandkumar visited and was threatened. The CCTV footage was later destroyed.

Dhananjay’s lawyer Gopal Bhagat said that the main accused Sangram Nikhalje, along with MP Ranjitsinh Naik Nimbalkar and lawyers Dynaneshwar Deshmukh and Nitin Deshmukh, had also been granted pre-arrest bail. “The four accused arrested secured bail because the investigating agency failed to produce evidence, and our case became weak,” he said. “We will soon move the higher court for justice.”

45-year-old Nandkumar Nanavare and his wife, Ujjwala Nanavare, 44, had left a suicide note and a phone video, blaming certain people, including two lawyers, for their suicide. The Vitthalwadi police registered a case of abetment to suicide against eight people—the four names mentioned in the suicide note and four others named in the video.