Six-year-old helps police trace woman’s killer husband

Police in Navi Mumbai have arrested a man for the murder of his wife after their six-year-old son identified her saree on her decomposed body. The husband had reported her missing on September 8, three days after he killed her by strangulation.

Navi Mumbai: The police team who were investigating the death of an unidentified woman whose decomposed body was discovered by Adivasi women on September 9 on the hills of Raigad’s Pali area, got clues into finding her killer after the woman’s six-year-old son identified the saree on her body.

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The subsequent investigation revealed that the husband, Sagar Kisan Pawar, 28, killed his wife, Kusba Sagar Pawar, 24, on September 5 by strangulation and later reported her missing.

On September 9, at around 5.30pm, Adivasi women from Umbarwadi Katkarwadi in Navaghar Gram Panchayat area of ​​Pali- Sudhagad taluka had gone on a mountain to catch crabs when they noticed a decomposed body of a woman.

After coming down from the mountain, the women informed the ‘Patil’ of the village who further alerted Pali police in Raigad. “While trying to identify the body, we went through the missing person’s complaints. The body seemed to be around five to six days old. We found a 24-year-old woman had gone missing on September 4 afternoon as per the complaint filed by her husband and we called him for identification of the body. The husband at first glance denied the body to be of his wife. We kept telling him to look at the body and clothes properly, we also asked him about jewellery on the body if that belonged to his wife. However, he seemed least bothered. He was not even worried about the whereabouts of his missing wife which raised suspicion. Then we decided to show the clothes of the body to his children who would not lie,” police inspector Sarita Chavan said. The police team then showed the clothes to her eldest son who was six years old who immediately identified it to be of his mother’s. The body was then confirmed to be of the missing lady Kusba. She lived with her children aged six, three and one and her husband’s grandmother. Meanwhile, in the neighbouring chawl lived her brother-in-law and his family. “After the boy recognised the dress we also verified the same from the neighbours,” Chavan added.

Further interrogation, it was found that the husband had killed his wife on September 5 and later on September 8, he registered a missing complaint stating that the wife went missing on September 4.

On September 5, Pawar who was living in Nashik with his second wife had come on September 5 afternoon and asked his first wife to get ready to go out.

According to police, nobody had noticed Pawar coming home and taking his wife. He then took her to the forest area on the nearby mountain wherein they had an argument over his second marriage and then he killed her by strangulating her with his hands. He then left the place and went home and started asking around where his wife was.

The family members and neighbours started looking for her but could not find her. Everyone knew that she had issues with him over his second marriage and people believed that out of frustration, she went away somewhere.

On September 8, the husband filed a missing person’s complaint. The accused, who got married to another lady around 15 months back and has a five-month-old baby from the second marriage, worked in a coal manufacturing factory in Nashik. He was arrested on September 12 and was produced before the court and has been remanded in police custody till September 16.