Navi Mumbai cop murder: Have not seized fridge in which body parts were stored, say police

The police are now looking at how to recover her body from the creek near Bhayander, where it was allegedly dumped

The Navi Mumbai police on Saturday denied that a refrigerator had been recovered during investigations into the disappearance and murder of assistant police inspector Ashwini Bidre-Gore, a day after reports appeared in some sections of media that the fridge in which her body was cut and stored had been seized.

Assistant police inspector Ashwini Bidre-Gore went missing on April 11, 2016.

Tushar Doshi, deputy commissioner of police (crime), Navi Mumbai, denied that they had recovered a fridge and said: “We are in advanced stages of the investigation, but everything that has appeared in news reports is not true.”

“At this point, the only concrete thing is that four people, including a police officer [senior inspector Abhay Kurundkar], have been arrested and booked for murder,” Doshi said.

After killing her, the four accused reportedly dumped her body in a creek near Bhayander. “We are now considering how to trace her mortal remains. Nothing has been decided so far,” Doshi said.

Gore was attached to the protection of civil rights unit at Konkan Bhavan in Belapur. She went missing on April 11, 2016.

Ten days ago, Kurundkar’s driver, Kundan Bhandari, 51, was arrested on February 23, while his close friend Mahesh Phalnikar, 48, was arrested from Pune on February 27.

The charges of murder were added after Phalnikar is believed to have confessed. Some media reports said that he also told the police Kurundkar had cut up Gore’s body and stored the parts in a fridge in his flat in Bhayander, and later dumped them in the creek.