Surat forest officer found with gunshot injury in car; family accuses husband

The woman officer, who was operated upon to remove the bullet from her head, continues to be in a critical condition

Published on: Nov 7, 2025, 17:42:12 IST

By Maulik Pathak

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Ahmedabad: A Gujarat forest officer was found in her car with a gunshot injury in Surat district’s Kamrej taluka along with her four-year-old son on Thursday morning, police said.

Doctors have removed the bullet, and her condition continues to remain critical, a police officer said. Her son was unhurt in the incident and told investigators that he heard a loud sound moments before his mother collapsed at a location between Jhokha and Vaav in Kamrej taluka.

Police said the woman officer, Sonal Arvindbhai Solanki, 33, Range Forest Officer, Pal division, and her son were found in the car that had crashed into a tree.

Deputy superintendent of police (DSP) RR Sarvaiya, Kamrej, said the officer’s brothers have filed a complaint against the woman’s husband, Nikunj Krantigiri Goswami, an inspector at the regional transport office in Surat’s Pali.

Police said Goswami was missing and search teams are looking for him.

The couple married in 2020 and had been living separately for about a year, police said.

Solanki was staying with her parents in Jhokha and had accused her husband of atrocities and harassment. On November 2, she complained to the Kamrej police that her vehicle was being tracked and accused her husband of being responsible. In the same complaint, she also feared for her and her son’s safety.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

Gunshot Injury

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