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Son-in-law held for Navi Mumbai woman’s murder
A day after the body of a 45-year-old woman, with her throat slit, was found at her home in Navi Mumbai, the Taloja police on Tuesday arrested her 28-year-old son-in-law for the murder. The accused committed the crime because he was upset over the fact that his pregnant wife visited her mother regularly, said the police.
The victim, Rekha Sharma, was found dead at her second-floor Taloja apartment in sector 11. The accused, Praful Siyali, works as an electrical technician married Sharma’s younger daughter two years ago and the couple stayed at Taloja phase-2 and was expecting their first child.
Based on preliminary investigation, police said Siyali arrived at Sharma’s house shortly after her husband left for work in the morning. He wore a raincoat and covered his face to prevent getting captured in the building’s CCTV cameras. When the police went through the CCTV footage of the people who visited the building around the time of the murder, they were surprised to find a person wearing a raincoat as it was not raining at the time.
After initial rounds of inquiry with the family members, and rummaging through the call detail records, the police suspected Siyali’s role in the murder. Once the police confirmed that Siyali was the main wearing the raincoat, the police arrested him.
“Along with technical analysis and CCTV footage, we zeroed down the accused and arrested him on Tuesday. We are investigating the case further to put together the sequence of events and to recover the murder weapon,” said senior inspector Kashinath Chavan from Taloja police station.
On Monday, Siyali’s wife tried calling Sharma on phone after 10am, but after she did not answer the calls, the couple went to the victim’s house.
“Sharma used to often insult Siyali. His wife had been regularly visiting Sharma in the since a while and it irked the accused. He asked his wife not to visit her mother’s house but when she did not agree to it, he decided to kill Sharma,” said inspector Raju Adagle from Taloja police station.
Siyali’s wife also used to spend Sundays at her mother’s house, which further angered him, said police officers.
Siyali has been booked for murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. He will be produced before a magistrate court on Wednesday.