The police cracked the murder case of Priyanka Siddhesh Gurav (23) by arresting her husband, in laws and an imitation jewellery maker on Friday night. The police had found a body with a missing head and legs in a nullah in Mahape in Navi Mumbai on May 6.
The police said the husband’s family hired Durgesh, a imitation jewellery maker from Dombivali, to chop the body in the bathroom and dump the pieces in separate places. “Durgesh was hired for ₹1 lakh of which ₹40,000 was paid in advance. The family did not want Priyanka to be their daughter-in-law,” a police official from Rabale MIDC Police Station.
The police said on May 4, four days after her marriage, her in-laws — Manohar Sitaram Gurav (49), a security worker with the Public Works Department, and Madhuri (45) — and her husband Siddhesh (23) and Durgesh strangled Priyanka and smothered her using a pillow. The body was identified by a tattoo of an Om symbol and Lord Ganapati on the left shoulder of the victim. After he marriage on April 30, Ms. Gurav was staying with her husband and in-laws in Worli.
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According to the police, Ms. Gurav and Siddhesh began a relationship while studying B.Com in a college in Dombivali. The police said, “Siddhesh was not ready to marry Priyanka, but she frequently complained to police that they had physical relationship and yet he was not marrying her. Due to pressure put on the family, Siddhesh finally agreed to marry Priyanka. The family alleged that Priyanka had undergone abortion twice before marriage and had affair with other boys.” The accused have been arrested under Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of the offence) of the IPC.