9 months after woman’s death, Thane police register murder case against her landlord and 2 others

PTI, Feb 26, 2023, 1:30 PM IST

Nine months after a 75-year-old woman was found dead in her house in Maharashtra’s Thane district, the police have registered a case of murder and destruction of evidence against her landlord, the latter’s wife and son, an official said on Sunday.

The deceased, Waheedabi Noormohammad Shaikh, was a widow and lived alone in the house in Kalyan town since 1990. Her landlord had been forcing her to vacate the house as he wanted to develop the property. The woman, however, had refused to vacate the house, the official from Bazarpeth police station said quoting a complaint filed by a relative of the deceased. The complainant also claimed the victim, who was his aunt, had on several occasions complained to him about the landlord troubling her, the official said.

The complainant visited the aunt’s house on May 13, 2022 and she was fine. However, after a few days he received a message that she died in the house on May 16. When he went there, the complainant found the body had turned black and there were blood stains around. Following his request, the police sent the body for postmortem, the official said. After the woman’s death, the landlord took away the house keys from the complainant. As the complainant suspected foul play in his aunt’s death, he approached a court which in January this year directed the police to register an offence against the landlord and his two family members and initiate a probe into the case. The Bazarpeth police on Saturday registered a case against the three persons under Indian Penal Code Sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention), the official said, adding no arrest has been made so far. The FIR also said that the police, after registering a case of accidental death in May last year, have been carrying out an independent probe into the woman’s death.