Navi Mumbai gas shop under scanner in father-son deaths

NAVI MUMBAI: The Navi Mumbai police on Saturday summoned the owner and the manager of a Kamathipura shop that sold a cylinder of carbon monoxide to Mahesh Kumar

NAVI MUMBAI: The Navi Mumbai police on Saturday summoned the owner and the manager of a Kamathipura shop that sold a cylinder of carbon monoxide to Mahesh Kumar Pawar, who allegedly killed his cognitively disabled son using the poisonous gas and then gassed himself to death on Thursday night.

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Pawar, an inspector of the state food and civil supplies department, had bought the cylinder for Rs8,572 on July 2, the police said.

“The shop has its office in Kamathipura in Mumbai and one refilling centre at Turbhe MIDC in Navi Mumbai. Pawar had booked the cylinder online and we have recovered the bill from his car,” said Dhanraj Dayama, assistant commissioner of police.

“We are checking if the shop has a licence to sell such gas, or if they violated any norm while selling the cylinder to Pawar. In case of violation of any given norms, we will take legal action against the owner and the managers,” he said.

“We don’t know on what pretext Pawar had purchased that cylinder from the shop. Since he was an inspector of food and civil supplies department, the shop might not have asked many questions before selling it to him,” said one police officer from Belapur police station.

This is the second incident of this type in Navi Mumbai since September, 2014. A 27-year-old man from Himachal Pradesh, who worked with a private company in the city, had committed suicide inhaling the same gas. After dinner, he opened the cylinder and kept it under his bed at night. He was found dead next morning. . Two of his colleagues who were sleeping in the adjacent room were also injured in that incident.

Dayama said, “After post-mortems were conducted in NMMC hospital in Vashi, we handed over Pawar and his son’s bodies to their family on Friday evening.”