Chopped, cooked, fed to the dogs

When they broke open the door, the first thing they saw in the house of accused Manoj Sane was a bloodied electric saw. In the kitchen, other than in the three buckets, the pressure cooker on the gas stove and the pan on the platform they also found human bones in the basin.

MUMBAI: A 32-year-old woman in suburban Mumbai was killed by her live-in partner of 9 years who then used an electric saw to hack her body into so many parts that the police couldn’t pin a number. For three days after the alleged murder, Manoj Sane, 56, tried to dispose of the body. In his frantic efforts to evade detection he pressure-cooked some body parts, roasted others, and ground some more in a mixer and fed them to stray dogs.

Manoj Sane, who works in the ration shop of Borivali, was identified with Saraswati 10 years ago... After killing Saraswati, he used to cut her into pieces and boil them in a cooker. Manoj Sane was in a relationship with Saraswati since 2014. The police have registered a case against the accused in this case under section 302, 201. The police produced him in the court on Thursday, June 8. Some parts of Saraswati Vaidh found from the kitchen of accused Manoj Sane's house. The accused has been given police custody by the police station till June 16. Pic by Azim Tamboli

When the police entered the sparsely-decorated 7th floor apartment at Geeta Akashdeep society, a middle- class enclave of 10 building in Mira Road, they found themselves in a veritable house of horror. “The kitchen was a complete mess-- there were buckets and multiple pots and pans full of chopped and minced human flesh,” says assistant police inspector Rahul Bhagtav who along with police inspector Jilani Sayyad was the first to enter the 2-bedroom house. The two officers had been sent there by the Nayanagar station house officer to investigate the neighbours’ complaint of the stench emanating from flat number 704.

When they broke open the door, the first thing they saw in the house was a bloodied electric saw. In the kitchen, other than in the three buckets, the pressure cooker on the gas stove and the pan on the platform they also found human bones in the basin. Adding to the horror was a pair of chopped off feet that sat on the platform.

On Wednesday night, the police arrested Sane for the murder of his live-in partner Saraswati Vaidya. The police say that Sane, who is employed at a kirana shop in the area, had met Saraswati, who was orphaned, in 2014, and the two began living together. Sane, say the police, was sure that if he could dispose of Saraswati’s body in time, no one would ever come looking for her and he could escape undetected.

Police say that Saraswati Vaidya and Manoj Sane did not interact with their neighbours and kept to themselves.

On Wednesday, after his arrest, Sane offered multiple stories to the police for Vaidya’s death. He first claimed that she had committed suicide on June 4 by consuming poison and fearing that he might be charged with abetment to suicide, he tried to get rid of the body instead of alerting either the neighbours or the police. Subsequently however he told the police that the two of them had had a fight as he suspected her of infidelity, and he stabbed her with a knife and then used the electric saw to cut her up.

On Thursday, after Sane had been remanded to police custody, the police gathered Saraswati Vaidya’s body parts in multiple polythene bags and sent them to JJ Hospital for post mortem to ascertain the cause and time of her death, said Jayant Bajbale, deputy commissioner of police, Mira-Bhayander.

“We have also recovered a few knives and cutters from the kitchen in Sane’s flat and are trying to confirm which of them was the murder weapon,” said an officer from Nayanagar police station. Sane and Vaidya’s phone too have been sent for forensic analysis and to see if they wield any clues to their relationship and the murder.