Suspicious father strangles 17-year-old girl to death, three arrested

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A 17-year-old girl in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra was allegedly killed by her father who was against her friendship with a boy studying with her in a college here, the police said on Sunday. Jamkhed police station inspector Pandurang Pawar said they suspected it to be a case of 'honour killing'.

The girl used to frequently chat with the boy on phone and go to college with him on his two-wheeler, he said. Her father Pandurang Shreerang Saygunde, 51, asked her several times to discontinue her friendship with the boy but the girl failed to heed his advice, he said. On March 23, Saygunde, in a fit of anger, allegedly strangled his daughter to death at their home in Chondi village, located around 60 km from here, Pawar said.

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He also allegedly tried to burn the body with the help of the girl's two maternal uncles and later lodged a missing complaint about his daughter at Jamkhed police station on March 24, he said. The half-burnt body was found by the deceased's sister on March 25 near a water body close to their house, he said.

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The police later sent the body for postmortem. They questioned around 35 people and based on information and clues gathered in connection with the incident, Saygunde and the girl's two uncles - Rajendra Jagannath Shinde (30) and Dnyandev Jagannath Shinde (35) - were arrested on Saturday evening, Pawar said. The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), he said, adding that a probe was underway into the case.

In another incident, a man allegedly killed his pregnant wife and slept beside the corpse through the night before alerting police in the morning in Maharashtra's Osmanabad district, an official said on Saturday. Omerga tehsil resident Vinod Dhansing Pawar had an argument with his wife Priyanka Rathod on Thursday night and strangled her, a Murum police station official said. "He then slept beside the body and came to the police station on Friday morning to confess to his crime and surrender," the official informed.

He said Pawar was a borewell commission agent while Rathod was a nurse at Tuljapur, adding that the couple had married nine months ago and the deceased was five-month pregnant. The woman's kin has told police that the accused used to demand money from her parents and this led to frequent quarrels, the official said.

A case of murder has been registered and further probe was underway, he added.

With inputs from PTI

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