Pune: A domestic dispute allegedly drove a 29-year-old man from Moshi to kill his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter and attempt to murder his five-year-old son in a forest area near Santwadi in Junnar taluka, around 100km from Pune, late on Tuesday night.Police said the accused, Sagar Shinde, first throttled his son and abandoned him in the forest, assuming he was dead. He later allegedly strangled his daughter, Harshada, to death and fled the spot.On Wednesday morning, the boy regained consciousness and wandered out of the forest, where locals found him. “The boy could tell the name of his father and his aunt, who happened to be the police patil of a nearby village,” inspector Bhojraj Misal of the Bhosari MIDC police told TOI.Misal said the woman took the child to the Ale Phata police station and alerted the children’s grandfather. The latter informed the police that his son and granddaughter were missing. He also said Shinde had briefly returned home on Wednesday morning and claimed he had rented a room in Chakan where the children were staying. He then collected some of their clothes and left.The grandfather later lodged a missing person’s complaint with the Bhosari MIDC police. “We began tracing the accused and detained him from Chakan,” Misal said.During questioning, Shinde confessed to attacking both children and abandoning them in the forest near Junnar. “We took him to the spot, where he showed us the body of his daughter,” Misal said.Police said Shinde’s wife had left him around six months ago following domestic disputes. He had also lost his job at a private firm in Bhosari MIDC two months ago and allegedly told investigators he was struggling to raise the children.“On Tuesday, he sold his cellphone in Chakan for Rs 4,500, travelled with the children to Nashik by bus, and later returned towards Pune before getting down at Junnar and carrying out the crime,” Misal said.Ale Phata police arrested Shinde on Thursday under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections related to murder, attempt to murder and destruction of evidence.
