Mira Road murder: Accused to be taken to JJ Hospital for psychiatric evaluation

According to the police, on June 16, they told the court that they wanted to understand the state of mind of Sane as he chopped up the body and pressure-cooked some of the pieces to destroy evidence in the murder

Mumbai: Fifty-six-year-old Manoj Sane, who was arrested for allegedly killing his live-in partner, Saraswati Vaidya, 32, and dismembering her body parts in Mira Road, will undergo a psychiatric evaluation on Monday at the JJ hospital. The report of the evaluation will be submitted before the Thane court on June 22 when Sane’s police custody will end.

The police have collected 13 pieces of evidence from the couple’s seventh-floor flat. The evidence includes two buckets, a tub, two bowls, a pressure cooker, medicines, the phones of the couple, an electric saw, knives, clothes of the couple and his black backpack which he used to dispose of the parts. “On checking Sane’s phone, we found a photo of Vaidya ‘s body after he had killed her,” said the officer. (HT PHOTO)

According to the police, on June 16, they told the court that they wanted to understand the state of mind of Sane as he chopped up the body and pressure-cooked some of the pieces to destroy evidence in the murder. The court was also told that the police had seized all the weapons, including the knives and the electric chainsaw, which Sane had used to dismember Vaidya’s body.

Sane had revealed all the places where he had disposed of the body parts, said a police officer, adding that, however, despite conducting a search operation, they were unable to recover all the pieces. “We requested for an extension of the police custody to find out the motive of the murder and the exact sequence of the events,” said Jayant Bajbale, deputy commissioner of police (Zone 1) of the Mira-Bhayander-Vasai-Virar police station.

Bajbale added that they had established that Sane had killed Vaidya but they were trying to piece together whether she was poisoned by Sane or was stabbed to death by him during a fight.

The police have collected 13 pieces of evidence from the couple’s seventh-floor flat. The evidence includes two buckets, a tub, two bowls, a pressure cooker, medicines, the phones of the couple, an electric saw, knives, clothes of the couple and his black backpack which he used to dispose of the parts. “On checking Sane’s phone, we found a photo of Vaidya ‘s body after he had killed her,” said the officer.

The police also recorded the statements of 25 people, including the vendor from which Sane had purchased the pesticide. “Sane had been misleading us. He murdered Vaidya as she used to fight with him as she was not financially secure and Sane had been cheating on her,” added the officer.

According to the police, they found bottles of cold drinks and buttermilk in the house. “Sane has told us that he had mixed pesticides with cold drinks and fed Vaidya. He then helped her to vomit it out; however, when she was about to pass out; he gave her buttermilk. After he realised Vaidya was dead, he clicked selfies with her body before hacking it into pieces with an electric chainsaw,” added the officer.

On June 7, the police officers responded to a call by the residents of the J wing of the Geeta Akashdeep building about a foul smell emanating from flat number 704. On breaking open the door, the police saw an electric saw on the bed and the body parts of Vaidya cut into pieces and stacked inside buckets, tubs and bowls. The police arrested Sane on the same night.