Rajura: Relative held gold, cash worth Rs 97,000 from retired employee's house

A theft case has been registered at Rajura police station against a woman related to the victim's family. The accused, Sunita Parchake, had come as a guest to the house of Ashok Bapurao Kowe, a 60-year-old retired employee living in the Pethward area of Rajura, and is alleged to have stolen gold ornaments and cash worth a total of Rs 97,000 kept in a grain storage bin in the house. She is accused of staying in the house for about two hours on the pretext of cooking food. A case has been registered under Section 305 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in the matter.

According to information received, Ashok Kowe lives in a rented house in the Pethward area of Rajura and is retired from Mahavitaran (MSEB). His wife died in 2023, and in May 2026 his only daughter got married, after which he began living alone in the house. His daughter Supriya used to visit her parental home once a week to look after the house, and kept her own and her late mother's jewellery at her father's house for safekeeping.

On September 9, before leaving for her in-laws' home in Vaygaon, Supriya had kept earrings (3 grams), two mangalsutras with a 17-bead chain (10 grams), a men's ring (15 grams), a nose ring (1 gram) and Rs 40,000 in cash, along with a purse containing about 29 grams of gold, safely in the grain storage bin.

After reaching her in-laws' home, Supriya received a call from her aunt, the accused Sunita Parchake, a resident of Nokari/Palgaon in Korpana tehsil, asking about Supriya's whereabouts. Supriya told her that she had gone to her in-laws' house and that her father was alone at home. The next day, on September 10, at around 9 am, Sunita Parchake arrived at Ashok Kowe's house and went into the kitchen on the pretext of cooking. She is alleged to have stayed in the house for about two hours and left at around 11 am.

On September 11, at 9 am, when Ashok Kowe went to heat water for a bath, he found the lock of the storage bin open. Suspicious, he opened the bin and found the purse containing the jewellery missing. He immediately called his daughter home. When Supriya arrived and checked, she found that earrings worth Rs 9,000, a mangalsutra and chain worth Rs 30,000, a gold ring worth Rs 45,000 and a nose ring worth Rs 3,000, totalling 29 grams of gold worth Rs 87,000, along with Rs 10,000 in cash from the purse, had been stolen, amounting to a total of Rs 97,000.

Because the suspicion fell on a close relative of the family, there was a delay of a few days in filing a complaint. Finally, on September 22, Ashok Kowe went to Rajura police station and lodged an oral complaint narrating the entire incident. Based on this complaint, Rajura police have registered a case against the suspect, Sunita Parchake. The matter is being investigated further by police constable Anup Dange under the supervision of station officer Nitinkumar Chincholkar.