Woman found dead in Gahunje flat months after leaving London; family believed she was still abroad

A 34-year-old woman, Mugdha Avinash Deshmukh, was found dead in a flat in the Lodha Belmondo society at Gahunje in Pune. Her body was in a decomposed state. Her family had believed all along that she was studying in London. The case came to light on October 31, 2026, and police are treating the death as suspicious.

Mugdha is the daughter of Avinash Deshmukh, a retired chief city engineer of the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Municipal Corporation. She went to London in July 2025 to pursue an MBA, and for a long time afterwards she stayed in regular touch with her family. Police say she had in fact left the United Kingdom in August 2026 and had been living in the Gahunje flat since then. Her parents were never told that she had come back to India.

The last known contact was a phone call on October 23. Mugdha spoke to her family, and her mother is named as the person she told that she was going for an interview. She then ended the call in a hurry. When the family rang the next day, her mobile phone was switched off. Initially they thought she might be busy, but repeated failed attempts made them anxious. On October 21, two days before that call, she had also asked the maid who worked at her home to stop coming.

Her father first approached the police in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and the family is reported to have gone to the Usmanpura police station, where a missing-person complaint was registered. He also asked Nikita, a friend of Mugdha's who lives in London, to find out where she was. Nikita went to the London police and filed a missing-person report. The answer she got was a shock: Mugdha had left London back in August.

The family and the police then looked at her bank statements and other information, and these pointed to Pune. Her mobile phone location was also traced. Police found that her credit card was being used continuously in India, on online delivery apps such as Zomato and Swiggy. Some technical evidence also confirmed that she was in the country. The location led investigators to the Lodha Belmondo society in Gahunje.

Relatives came to Pune with a team of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar police. To find her residence, the team took help from the Shirgaon police of Pimpri-Chinchwad. At the flat, repeated knocking and phone calls brought no response. The accounts differ on how police got in. One version says officers broke open the door. Another says the door was locked from inside and was opened with a duplicate key. Either way, they found Mugdha dead inside.

Police noticed that the air conditioner and the fan in the flat were running. Some medicines were lying around her. The body was sent for post-mortem, but the examination has so far not established the exact cause of death.

Many questions remain unanswered. It is not known why Mugdha left London in August, why she chose to come to Pune, or why she kept her return from her parents, even though she had been living in an upscale society for a few months. Investigators are trying to piece together what happened after her last conversation with her family on October 23 and in what circumstances she died. As the post-mortem has not settled the matter, they are also examining whether any other angle was involved. Police are continuing their investigation.