One murder probe leads cops to another woman’s killing

Nagpur: Bhandara police this week unearthed murder of a 23-year-old dalit woman, who went missing in 2019 from Kawlewada. Cops stumbled upon the murder while they were probing an undetected case of another woman’s body found in a sack earlier this year at Jawahar Nagar.
Stepping up probe in Jawahar Nagar case, Bhandara cops started questioning convicts released from jail recently to get clues. In the process, a local crime branch cop got a tip-off that a woman was murdered and buried near Kawlewada village within the limits of Gobarwahi police station.
As cops started scanning through the missing reports, they came across the mysterious case of 23-year-old Archana Raut from Kawlewada. Her chappal and scarf were found at the residence of one Borkar Patil family, said to be influential figures of the village.
Archana used to work at the house of the Borkar family. She was last seen at the residence of the Borkar family on April 20, 2019.
Archana’s family was threatened by the Borkars, who had also accompanied them to the Gobarwahi police station. The Borkars had ensured a missing complaint was registered in the case.
SP Lohit Matani said that the probe team under assistant PI Nitin Madankar had managed to trace an eyewitness, who had provided Sanjay Borkar, his elder brother Rajkumar, and their driver Dharam Sayam a spade and digging tool.
“The eyewitness didn’t figure in the probe earlier. He recalled seeing a panicked Borkar brothers, and their driver heading towards the Chikla mines forest area with the spade and digging tools,” said Matani, adding that the police can go for narco-analysis to ascertain the motive behind the murder.
Investigation officer Madankar said that the father of the victim had spotted the Borkar brothers washing their vehicle after Archana went missing. “The Borkar brothers are claiming to have disposed the body after the victim had died by suicide. But they are not showing us the place where they have buried her,” said Madankar.