Partially burnt body of missing lawyer found in Maharashtra's Deglur, 3 detained

PUNE: A lawyer's partially burnt body was found on Monday at Deglur in Nanded district, bordering Karnataka and Telangana, two days after he reportedly went missing from his Kalewadi office on December 31.
The Pimpri Chinchwad police have detained three men, including the husband of the lawyer's niece. He had led the investigators to the spot in Deglur where the body was left in a partially burnt condition.
"Preliminary investigation revealed that the husband of the lawyer's niece from Deglur suspected an illicit affair between his wife and the lawyer. The lawyer's niece, also an advocate who had joined his chamber six months ago for legal practice, has filed a suit for divorce and he was representing her in the matter," senior inspector Satyawan Mane of the Wakad police said.
The lawyer had left his Moshi home for the office in Kalewadi on Saturday afternoon. But he had no contact with his family after 7pm. Following a search, his wife lodged a missing person's complaint around 4am on Sunday.
Mane said, "In the ensuing investigation, we came across the divorce matter in which the lawyer was representing his niece. The lawyer's wife told us that his niece's husband suspected him of having an illicit relationship with his niece and had earlier threatened to kill him. We then detained the lawyer's niece's husband and his questioning led to the revelation of the crime."
Mane said, "For now, we have registered a case for an offence under Section 364 (abduction with an intention to cause death) of the Indian Penal Code. We shall add other relevant sections once the legal formalities of identification of the body by close relatives is completed."
Assistant inspector Harish Mane of the Pimpri Chinchwad crime branch cited the investigation and said, "On Saturday afternoon, the niece's husband and his two accomplices reached the lawyer's office and overpowered him after a scuffle. They gagged him, tied his limbs with tape and dumped him in a drum. He was then put in a light commercial vehicle (LCV). The suspects drove the LCV to Deglur. Somewhere on the way, the lawyer died of suffocation in the drum. The suspects then set the body ablaze at Deglur before leaving it there."
Harish Mane has reached the spot in Deglur with his team. He said, "We are probing if more suspects were involved in the abduction."
Senior inspector Satyawan Mane said, "The lawyer's wife told us that after leaving for office, her husband had called her around 2.45pm to remind her about some guests slated to visit their house in the night. When she tried to contact her husband around 4pm, she found his cellphone unreachable. She then called a tea stall owner near the lawyer's office and asked him to check if her husband was in the office."
He said, "The stall owner told her that the office was locked, but her husband's two-wheeler was parked outside. She sent her elder son to the office around 6.30pm and he also gave the same information. The lawyer's friends, his wife and her relatives later visited his office. The tea stall owner told them that the lawyer was last seen with some client at his stall. When her husband did not return home till early Sunday morning, she approached us around 4am and filed a missing person's complaint."
He said, "When we visited the lawyer's office, we came across some signs of scuffle inside. Two buttons of a shirt were lying on the floor. We found an LCV moving in front of the lawyer's office in the CCTV footage."