Nagpur: Under relentless pressure from his mistress to leave his wife and children and marry her, a 49-year-old teacher throttled her inside his car, following a heated argument at a desolate place in Chandrapur on October 14, police said. Her body was exhumed early Sunday from an under-construction house in the outskirts of Hingna, 150km off the crime spot.To fox the cops, the accused allegedly dumped the body in the car’s boot, tossed her cell phone in a moving local train, then drove to Nagpur the next day. He buried the body in a pit dug for a water tank in Hingna after layering it with salt then covering it with loose soil. Her cell phone was later recovered by Railway Protection Force and handed over to the woman’s son.The accused, Santosh Sakharakar, allegedly confessed to the crime at Chandrapur city police station on Saturday after the woman’s disappearance led to a police probe.The deceased, a 46-year-old housewife, was reportedly in a relationship with the teacher for four years and police are examining allegations the woman was blackmailing him to marry her.Police suspect Sakharakar took the mistress in his car to a secluded location near Chandrapur, where he throttled her and struck her with a boulder.On October 15, he drove to an under-construction house on the outskirts of Nagpur, where he found a 5×6-foot pit dug for a water tank, where he buried the body and returned to Chandrapur.Meanwhile, the woman’s family lodged a missing complaint on October 17. Sakharakar subsequently approached Chandrapur police the same day and reportedly confessed before senior police inspector Shyam Gavhane about his crime.Initially sceptical, police verified the information and brought him to Nagpur to identify the burial site. Hingna senior police inspector Pramod Ghonge contacted the local tehsildar and executive magistrate before exhuming the body in the presence of officials and witnesses. The woman’s 26-year-old son identified her by a tattoo bearing the initials ‘VV’ on her left hand. The body was subsequently sent for autopsy and forensic examination.Chandrapur police registered a murder case on Sunday and arrested Sakharakar. Police will be seeking his custody till October 22.
