Kolhapur: Man held for allegedly pushing girlfriend into 250-ft gorge at Bhudargad
Police in Kolhapur district detained a 25-year-old man after the body of a 23-year-old woman was pulled from a 250-foot gorge in Naikwadi, Bhudargad taluka.
Images are not validated/verified
A young woman has allegedly been pushed into a gorge about 250 feet deep and killed at Naikwadi in Bhudargad taluka of Kolhapur district. Police have detained the man suspected to be her lover. The incident has caused alarm across Bhudargad taluka, including Gargoti.
The victim is Tarannum Bashir Naik, 23, originally from Patgaon, who was living in Gargoti. The suspect is Shripad Dinkar Wadar, 25, a resident of Avadhoot Colony in Gargoti.
According to information received by the police, Shripad and Tarannum lived opposite each other's homes in Gargoti. They had known each other for long, and a relationship developed from that. The relationship had lasted five and a half years. Tarannum was studying engineering. A few months ago her marriage was fixed, after which she began meeting Shripad less and told him the relationship could not continue.
At about 11 am on Friday, October 9, Shripad sweet-talked Tarannum into going with him to a hilltop at Naikwadi. There Tarannum told him plainly that, as her marriage had been fixed, the relationship could not be kept up. It is alleged that, angered by this, Shripad pushed her into the 250-foot gorge at about 3 pm. He then went to Bhudargad police station himself.
At the police station, Shripad said he had gone by bike to fetch water and that Tarannum was missing when he returned. On his complaint, police registered a case of abduction. The police, however, doubted his account. When they began questioning him sternly, inconsistencies emerged in his statement. According to the police, when faced with a barrage of questions he finally confessed to pushing Tarannum into the gorge. The investigation also showed that Shripad had himself made up the story of her disappearance.
The search in the gorge had to be halted on Friday night because it was late and dark. On Saturday morning a rescue team from Amboli resumed the search. After about four hours of effort, Tarannum's body was brought out of the 250-foot gorge with the help of ropes. The body has been sent to a government hospital in Kolhapur for post-mortem.
Further investigation is under way under the guidance of Police Inspector Sandeep Jagtap. The incident has drawn the state's attention in Kolhapur, amid the discussion over the murder of Ketan Agrawal at Lohagad in Pune.
