‘Decided to end life…no regrets’: What accused live-in partner told police about Mumbai horror

The 56-year-old man in suburban Mumbai accused of killing his live-in partner and hacking her body into pieces offered contradicting stories to the police.

Manoj Sane initially claimed that his partner, Saraswati Vaidya, had died by suicide by consuming poison on June 3 and he only tried to get rid of the body fearing he might be charged with abetment.

Sane tried to dispose of the body by hacking it into so many pieces that the police couldn’t pin a number and then boiling some of them, roasting others, grounding some more in a mixer and feeding them to stray dogs. The accused told the police that he boiled the body parts in a pressure cooker to avoid the stench.

During the interrogation, Sane also said he had decided to end his life after disposing of the body and doesn’t regret any of it, reported ANI quoting police.

Police said they are verifying his suicide claim as they have doubts about it.

“Investigation is underway and the pieces of the body recovered from the house have been sent to JJ Hospital for postmortem. We have doubts about his claim of suicide,” police said.

Sane, however, later told police that the two of them had had a fight as he suspected her of infidelity, and he stabbed her with a knife and then used the electric saw to cut her up.

On Thursday, the police gathered Vaidya’s body parts in multiple polythene bags and sent them to JJ Hospital for post-mortem to ascertain the cause and time of her death, said Jayant Bajbale, deputy commissioner of police, Mira-Bhayander.

The crime has brought the spotlight on the growing number of cases involving violence against women at the hands of their intimate partners. The chairperson of the National Commission for Women, meanwhile, expressed concern over the recent surge in such spine-chilling killings and said that people are taking clues from past incidents to commit such heinous crimes.

“I have seen people now taking clues from past incidents which are very gruesome and heinous. These kinds of crimes against live-in partners have increased in the recent past. Society needs to think about how to control it, especially the families of both, and how we are raising our children who are doing such crimes,” NCW Chairperson Rekha Sharma told ANI.