70-year-old woman found brutally murdered at home in Pune

PUNE: The Sinhagad Road police have launched an investigation after a Hingne Khurd resident, Shalini Baban Sonawane (70), was found murdered in the living room of her one-bedroom flat around 10pm on Saturday.

Jewellery worth Rs1.74 lakh was reported missing from the flat, police said, and added the assailant(s) used a heavy, blunt object to bludgeon the victim, who lived.
Her son, Virat (39), who stays in an adjoining building, found her injured and motionless when he visited her flat around 10pm on Saturday, police said. Virat, a technician with a city hospital, called the police control room following which a Sinhagad Road police team rushed to the flat. A forensic team was summoned there to collect clues.
The front door of the flat was bolted from the outside. Virat and his wife made a few calls to Shalini around 10pm before he reached the flat to check on her, police said.
Inspector Pramod Waghmare of the Sinhagad Road police told TOI, “We suspect the murder occurred sometime between 12.30pm and 10pm. The bedroom cupboard was found open and things inside were scattered all over the place. Her son told us that gold ornaments totally worth Rs1.74 lakh were missing.”
He said, “A preliminary post-mortem report has come with an ‘opinion reserved’ remark. For now, we are going by the theory of theft as the motive behind the murder. We will investigate further to see if there is any other angle. The suspect(s) left the gold ornaments, worn by the victim, untouched.”
“Similarly, silver ornaments of a deity in an altar and cash of over Rs5,000 in a nearby small cupboard were left untouched. We searched the flat but did not find any murder weapon. Our team did not find any signs of a forced entry. The neighbours did not hear any commotion,” he added.
Shalini’s husband, who was a village development officer at Ghodegaon in Manchar, died in 2009. She was living on his pension. She lived in the flat with her younger son, Vishal, until his death in a road accident in 2019. Her eldest son Vinay and his family stay nearby, while Virat had moved into a flat in an adjacent building three months ago with his family, police said.
Virat told TOI, “I was at home on Saturday. My mother went out to buy milk around 11am and came back. My daughter met her on the way to tuition classes, and my elder brother too visited her around 11.30am. On her way back from tuition class, my daughter found the door bolted from the outside. She thought my mother must have gone out nearby. At night, my wife started calling my mother to know if she had dinner.” Virat said his mother did not answer the calls. “I then rushed to her flat and found her injured and motionless,” he said.
The police have registered a case for under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 459 (causing grievous hurt while committing lurking house trespass).