Mumbai: After spending ten years in jail on charges of double murder, a sessions court convicted an Andheri labourer, Laxman Dhangar, for killing his wife Parvati by strangulation and later drowning their two-year-old son, Akil, holding that the prosecution proved not only the killings but also his role in removing the bodies and filing a false missing complaint to screen the offences. The couple’s other son Anil, examined as a child witness, testified through a translator that a quarrel took place and that Dhangar pressed Parvati’s throat. Public prosecutor Sachiv Jadhav presented the prosecution’s case.The judgement records the child’s account, “The accused put his one leg on the thigh of his mother and put his second leg on the throat and neck and pressed the throat of his mother Parvati with his hand whereby she was crying, but after some time, she stopped crying.”In two separate judgements, Judge M Mohiuddin MA sentenced Dhangar to rigorous imprisonment for life for the murders and three years’ rigorous imprisonment for causing disappearance of evidence, with both sentences to run concurrently in the two connected trials.The court recorded that Dhangar had three wives. First wife Jamlamma and second wife Parvati were sisters and had married Dhangar on the same day with family consent. Later, Dhangar married third wife Ashamma. All lived near each other in Dhangarwadi, Andheri West, and worked as labourers. Parvati had two sons, Anil and Akil.According to the prosecution, on August 6, 2016, Dhangar suspected Parvati’s character and quarrelled with her. Neighbour Laxmi Poojari told the court that Dhangar used to quarrel with Parvati on that suspicion and, on the night of Aug 6, 2016 took Parvati and both children with him.The prosecution said after Dhangar killed his wife, he then removed her body and dumped it in bushes in the Wireless Compound behind the proposed Khoobchandani Hospital. The next morning, on Aug 7, Dhangar took Akil from Ashamma’s house. In the child’s murder trial, Ashamma testified that Dhangar returned without Akil and told her that he had drowned the child in a stream. The court noted that Ashamma was crying while giving this evidence.On August 8, Dhangar and Ashamma went to DN Nagar police station and lodged a missing complaint stating that Parvati and Akil had been missing since Aug 6. On the same day, Juhu police found the body of an unidentified young boy floating in a stream near Pushpa Garden and Selfie Point at Vile Parle West. An accidental death report was initially registered. The body was later identified as Akil.On Aug 12, police received information that a woman’s decomposed body was lying in bushes near the Wireless Compound. Police reached the spot and found the body of a woman aged about 30 to 35 years. During inquiry, police learnt that Dhangar’s wife had been missing. Dhangar, who was present in the crowd, identified the body as Parvati’s. The court treated that conduct as relevant, observing that Dhangar knew where the body had been thrown. “The conduct of the accused shows that he knew where he had thrown the dead body and was waiting for somebody to notice it, and only after the arrival of police did he come forward and feign ignorance by explaining that he had already filed missing report of his wife,” the judge said.The medical evidence in Parvati’s death showed advanced decomposition, but the doctor noted tiny haemorrhages in the lungs and heart consistent with asphyxia. The court held that the medical evidence supported the child witness’s account.Police also recovered Parvati’s ornaments, including a silver kada and anklets, at Dhangar’s instance from a trunk in Ashamma’s house. The court relied on witness identification of Parvati’s clothes and ornaments found with the body, and rejected the defence objection that the body had not been formally identified at the hospital.In the wife murder trial, Ashamma did not support the prosecution in court, though her earlier statements before police and the magistrate had implicated Dhangar.In Akil’s death, an autorickshaw driver told the court that on the morning of Aug 7, near the stream, he saw Dhangar carrying the child on the shoulder and that the child was crying. The court found this evidence reliable and consistent with Ashamma’s testimony and the later recovery of the child’s body from the same area.In one sentence, the prosecution sought the death penalty or imprisonment for the rest of natural life, stressing that Dhangar had killed wife and child and lodged a false missing report.
