Man booked for strangling 4-yr-old daughter to death in Anand

The Anand district police Wednesday arrested a 23-year-old man for allegedly strangling his four-year-old daughter to death at Mujkuva village in Anand district on Monday.

According to the case registered at Anklav police station in Anand, the accused, Shailesh Padhiyar, killed the girl in a fit of rage by strangling her with a belt of her frock after constant quarrels with his wife.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP), Petlad division, RL Rathod said the accused had lost his job during the Covid-19 lockdown, following which the couple began having bitter fights. On January 25 evening, Padhiyar gathered a few villagers, claiming that his daughter had not returned home after her usual playtime in the neighbourhood. When the villagers began a search, they found the body of the girl on the side of a nullah passing through a field, with the belt of her frock around her neck.

Solanki said, “The accused is currently unemployed. He was working in a private company in Vadodara but lost his job during the lockdown. His wife is not an earning member. We have, so far, learnt that they had bitter fights and questioned each other’s character during their quarrels. In one of the fights, the wife told him that he was not the father of the daughter and she had conceived during another affair. This allegedly had enraged Padhiyar and he decided to kill the child. We are not investigating if the wife said it in her moment of anger or whether the girl was indeed not his biological daughter.”

Besides investigating the motive behind the crime, the police are also probing the couple’s age and the validity of their marriage. “Both of them are unable to recall the date or year when they married. They claim to have been married for six years but the accused has stated that he is only 23 years of age. The mother is still in a state of shock but we will ascertain the facts during the investigation,” Solanki said. The autopsy has concluded the girl died due to strangulation, he added.

Padhiyar has been booked under Indian Penal Code section 302 for culpable homicide amounting to murder.