SURAT: ENT specialist Dr
Mayank Patel, on the run for over a month after he had been booked for abetting his wife's suicide, was arrested from a place near his residence under the limits of
Navsari rural police station on Saturday. Patel had managed to evade arrest by keeping his mobile phone switched off.
Patel, a resident of Ishwar Darshan Society in Navsari, was booked for abetting the suicide of his wife Dr Dipal Patel (32), who had hanged herself from the ceiling fan at her residence on November 5 last year. Patel's father
Natwarlal was also made co-accused in the case. The father-son duo was booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 498 (cruelty), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (insult), 506 (criminal intimidation) and under Dowry Prohibition Act. Dipal's father
Dhiru Gaikwad, a resident of
Nani Naroli in Surat, had lodged a police complaint against them on December 1, 2017.
Gaikwad in his complaint alleged that the demand for dowry started soon after Dipal, a master's in anaesthesia, got married to Patel. Gaikwad claimed he had already given a car and a bungalow as dowry and even sponsored the newly-wed couple's honeymoon trip, but his daughter's torture never ended.
"The accused kept changing his locations and had his phone switched off. However, the police were continuously chasing him and finally nabbed him. We will seek his remand from the court for further investigation," police inspector, Navsari rural police station, B M Parmar said.
Dipal's family had also alleged in an application submitted to senior police officials that the deceased was murdered. However, the police claimed that postmortem findings suggest that she had committed suicide. Police will be doing crime scene reconstruction to remove any suspicion of her murder.
