Satara : The Maharashtra Police on Tuesday said they had found bodies of four of the six people murdered in cold blood by a self-confessed medico, Santosh Pol.
Satara Superintendent of Police Sandip Patil, who rushed to Wai town with colleagues, said that following the shocking revelations by Pol, police dug up his farmhouse premises and found the remains of four bodies at various locations.
Charged with kidnapping and murdering an ‘aanganwadi worker’ Mangal Jedhe on June 16, Pol admitted to committing a total of six murders, including that of a man, after administering them lethal overdose of some medicines, earning him the sobriquet ‘Dr. Death’.
The 41-year-old Pol’s associate — Nurse Jyoti Mandre — has also been arrested. Both have been sent to police custody by a court. The case has stunned Maharashtra. “We are trying to find out where the fifth victim’s body was disposed of and also one victim whose body was thrown into a water reservoir,” Patil told media persons.
Among the victims was an orphan woman, Salma Shaikh, who was missing since January this year. Another, Vanita Gaikwad, belonged to a jeweller’s family and went missing in July 2006. A majority of the victims either worked with him or came in contact as patients.
Though Patil did not specify the exact motive behind the killings, initial investigation pointed to the accused cheating his victims of their gold and more. “We shall investigate all the missing persons’ cases in and around Wai since 2003, the hospitals where he worked, question other patients and employees, tackle all possible angles,” Patil asserted.
Meanwhile, a police team is busy digging Pol’s sprawling farmhouse land for possibly more bodies. Patil said that skeletal remains found would be sent for forensic analysis to match them with the DNA of the missing persons. Pol, described as an ‘Electro-Homoeopath’, practiced in some local hospitals and at his farmhouse, 13 km on the outskirts of the quaint Wai town, at the base of the twin hill stations of Mahabaleshwar-Panchgani, around 175 km south of Mumbai.
The medico’s alleged crimes came to light after the police began to probe the suspicious disappearance of 49-year-old Mangal Jedhe, President of the Maharashtra Purva Prathmik Shikshika Sevika Sangh, on June 16. “She had left Wai for Pune to attend to her daughter’s delivery but never reached there,” said MPPSSS general secretary Shaukat Pathan. Wai police officer Padmakar Ghanvat said investigations revealed that prior to leaving for Pune, she was in touch with Pol and both had a bitter fight when she threatened to reveal his activities. Pol has confessed that he kidnapped Jedhe from the Wai Bus Depot and eliminated her the following day by administering an overdose of a lethal medicine.
