Mumbai: 75-year-old found dead in Tilak Nagar, wife arrested

The police suspect Chotelal Maurya was murdered by his wife Dhanudevi

THE TILAK Nagar police on Tuesday arrested a 65-year-old woman for allegedly murdering her 75-year-old husband by smashing his head with a paver block at their residence. According to the police, Dhanudevi was frustrated with her husband Chotelal Maurya’s extra-marital relationships and the constant harassment she allegedly faced at his hands.

The police had earlier registered a case of murder against unidentified persons after Maurya’s body was found at his home on Sunday afternoon.

According to the police, Maurya lived with his wife on the first floor of a ground-plus-one structure on P Y Thorat Marg in Tilak Nagar. The couple had six children — four sons and two daughters — who live elsewhere.
Maurya owned four rooms on the ground floor of the building and had rented them out to shops. The couple sold vegetables from one of the shops, an officer said.

On Sunday afternoon, the couple was sleeping in the house. Around 2.10 pm, Dhanudevi told the police she had gone to a tailor’s shop on the same floor of the building. When she left, Maurya was sleeping.

According to her statement, when she returned home around 3.30 pm, she found her husband lying in a pool of blood with an injury mark on his head. Shopkeepers from the ground floor rushed in after hearing Dhanudevi’s screaming.

They rushed Maurya to the Rajawadi Hospital, where he was declared “dead before admission”, said the police.
Senior Inspector of Tilak Nagar police station Vijay Khaire said the family initially suspected he might have fallen and fatally hurt himself. “However, the post-mortem pointed that Maurya had died after being hit once on the back of the head with a blunt object. Doctors said it did not appear to be an accident but a murder,” said Khaire.

The police ruled out robbery as the motive after they found that nothing was missing from the house.
Inspector Manisha Shirke, investigating the case, said: “During interrogation, she (Dhanudevi) broke down and confessed to have smashed Maurya’s head with a paver block while he was sleeping. She said she was tired of him mistreating her. She has said that he had an extra-martial affairs…. He also did not give her money. She was tired of this.”