Mass killings: After mid-day expose, Mumbai team sent to Satara

A day after mid-day pointed out how the Wai police had made its first blunder in the serial murder investigation by dumping the post-mortems on regular doctors instead of calling forensic surgeons, an expert team has been called in from Mumbai to do the job properly.

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A forensic team from Mumbai will now be sent to conduct post-mortems on the exhumed remains and gather evidence to nail the accused

Dr Harish Phatak, head of the department of forensic medicine and toxicology at KEM medical college and has reached Wai, along with his team of four.

The greatest challenge, even now, is proving the cause of death, as the decomposed remains will show no trace of the deadly drug

The forensic team will visit the poultry farm where the bodies were exhumed on Friday morning and conduct fresh post-mortems.

Dr Phatak told mid-day, "I have asked the police to furnish all the papers, including medical reports they have got so far from the civil hospital in Satara. If need be, along with DNA analysis, we may do superimposition of the skulls to identify the deceased."

But why Mumbai?
A senior forensic expert from Mumbai said, "We are still wondering why the police did not bother to call forensic experts from BJ medical college in Pune, or from Miraj or Kolhapur medical college, which are closer to the crime scene."

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These medical colleges have full-fledged anatomy departments, and they could have sent anatomy experts to study the crime scene along with forensic experts. For instance, an anatomy expert could have studied each of the pits and counted the bones in them to check whether all 206 bones from each skeleton were accounted for.

Furthermore, these experts could have helped to determine age and sex of the deceased on the basis of the bones.

Meanwhile, highly placed officials at the home department informed mid-day that the Inspector General of Police (Kolhapur Range) Vishwas Nangre Patil and Superintendent of Police (Satara) Sandip Patil might meet the chief minister to discuss the case.

Mystery over body #6
Santosh Pol lied about dumping the sixth body - Vanita Gaikwad - in the Dhom river. A team from the local crime branch took him to the riverbank on Wednesday, but he failed to give satisfactory answers.

Pol has now told the police that he buried Vanita in the backyard of the farmhouse and cops are looking for it.