The Panvel City police arrested a 29-year-old woman police constable attached to Mumbai police for allegedly giving a contract to kill another 54-year-old police constable from Mumbai police. The police constable had died following an accident in Panvel on August 15 night.
According to police, the personal enmity between the two led to the murder of the constable.
Initially, the incident appeared as a hit-and-run case. However, the family of the deceased cop suspected foul play and sought a thorough investigation. The Panvel City police registered a case under sections 279, 337, 338, and 304 (A) of IPC and sections 184 and 134 (a) and (b) of the Motor vehicle Act and started the investigation.
Police said that the arrested woman cop identified as Shital Pansare while the deceased cop identified as Shivaji Sanap. They were having personal issues since they were posted at Nehru Nagar police station in Mumbai.
As constable Sanap was staying in Pune and used to commute to Mumbai for his work, the Panvel City police checked CCTV footage between Panvel and Kurla stations and found two suspicious men following Sanap from Kurla station. “Both the men first parked a Nano car at Panvel station and went to Kurla in a local train and then came back following Sanap. As Sanap was hit by a vehicle, we traced these two men through technical analysis,” said Ajay Landge, senior police inspector from Panvel City police station. They were identified as Vishal Babanrao Jadhav, 18, a resident of Ulwe and Ganesh Chavan alias Mudawadh, 21, a resident of Telangana state.
During the investigation, they revealed that Jadhav’s father Babanrao is a watchman at the same building where the woman constable Pansare resides in Ulwe in Navi Mumbai. Later Pansare was interrogated, and she admitted to having given a contract both of them to kill Sanap. She had also managed a Nano car to commit the crime. After hitting Sanap, both of them had burnt the car at an abandoned place which the police recovered.
Vipin Kumar Singh, commissioner of police said that the accused woman constable had filed cases against the constable Sanap in three different police stations including in Belapur in Navi Mumbai for stalking, molestation, and other charges. These cases are at different stages of the investigation.
“Pansare was planning to kill Sanap for a long time. She had even married a BEST bus driver Dhanraj Jadhav after getting an acquaintance on social media and asked him to murder Sanap. After Jadhav refused, she had also filed a case against him,” said Singh. He added that the nature of complaints against Sanap was stalking, molestation among others.
