Thane: Two persons, including a woman, have been arrested for allegedly murdering journalist Nityanand Pandey and disposing of the body, Thane rural police said on Monday. Pandey was killed by his assistant, Ankita Mishra, as he was reported to have been sexually assaulting her, police said.
Ankita, 24, Pandey’s assistant, was a journalist with India Unbound, a monthly magazine edited by Pandey, while Satish Mishra, 34, was the printer of the magazine. Ankita confided in Mishra and he is alleged to have helped her, according to police.
A case under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered against the two accused. Thane rural police formed three teams to probe the case. On the basis of CCTV footage and mobile network locations, both the accused were questioned.
Their answers made police suspicious and further interrogation led to Ankita confessing that with Mishra’s help, she had killed Pandey. She told police she had been sexually abused and harassed by him for the past two years. Frustrated, she then hatched a plot to kill him.
Police said, on March 15, she and Mishra took Pandey in an SUV to Uttan on the pretext of showing him a rowhouse. They offered him a protein drink spiked with a sedative. This caused Pandey to become unconscious and the duo strangled him in the SUV.
They then threw his body into a creek in Khardi village in Bhiwandi Kharbao. Pandey sported an expensive watch and car and gave the impression of being very rich, however, there were a few cases of extortion against him at the Kashimira police station in the past, police said.
Vainkat Andhale, senior police inspector, Thane rural local crime branch, said, “The accused Ankita and Pandey’s 22-year-old daughter are friends. Ankita’s family is in a very bad shape financially, as her father, a former construction contractor, was bedridden after a paralytic attack.
She has a younger sister preparing for the IAS exams and a brother in Class X. Ankita, a commerce graduate, desperately needed a job and her friend had helped her obtain a job with the magazine three years ago. Initially, Pandey had helped her financially, for her father’s treatment.
“However, he soon began to take advantage of Ankita, often touching her inappropriately in the office. On several occasions, she said, he sexually assaulted her after taking her to a hotel, threatening to kill her if she left him. She had to undergo an abortion once, according to police. Fed up of the continuing abuse, Ankita decided to murder him.
“Pandey always interviewed IAS, IPS bureaucrats and politicians, as a result of which Ankita did not get help from police,” said Andhale. India Unbound, as per its website, is a monthly news and views magazine mailed directly to over one lakh households across the country.
Pandey’s body, with head injuries, had been found in a creek in Bhiwandi on Sunday. Bhiwandi taluka police had initially registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR). When Pandey’s family was traced to Mira Road and informed of his death, they expressed suspicion over his sudden death.
According to his family, he had left home around 7.30am on March 15. On March 16, a missing person complaint was filed with the Kashimira police station when he failed to come home. Police had sent his body to JJ hospital for post-mortem.
