Murder accused, victim were married, say sisters

MUMBAI: Saraswati Vaidya, 34, who grew up in an orphanage in Ahmednagar, was married to Manoj Sane, 56, who is accused of killing her in their Mira Road flat and chopping the body into small pieces with a chainsaw, her three elder sisters told the police on Friday. They had married in a temple about eight years ago.
The police said DNA samples would be collected from the sisters to be matched with that of the body parts believed to be of Vaidya’s.
Sane has told the police Vaidya was his live-in partner. He never mentioned Vaidya’s sisters’ and insisted she was an orphan. He is believed to have murdered her on June 4, chopped the body and boiled some of the pieces in a pressure cooker and roasted some others in his kitchen to help dispose of it till the stench gave him away and he was arrested on June 7. Sane has claimed that Vaidya had died by poisoning when he was away on June 3 and he panicked and tried to dispose of the body.
After reading about the murder, the sisters, who stay in Mumbai, approached the cops. In their statements, they said their youngest sister and Sane married in a temple and initially lived in Borivli.
The sisters said they had visited Sane and Vaidya when the couple lived in Borivli, but had not been to their Mira Road home. Sane had rented flat 704 in Geeta Akashdeep building three years ago. Though the couple did not interact much with neighbours, they believed the couple to be husband-wife. The sisters also told the police that neither Vaidya nor any of them had visited Sane’s family home in Sane Residency, Babhai Naka, Borivli (west).

The sisters told the police that due to their age difference, Vaidya would often tell people that Sane was her maternal uncle. Vaidya had visited her orphanage, Jankibai Apte Balikashram, a few years ago to get a certificate of her stay there. She had told the staffers that she lived with her uncle and that he had a business.
The police said the sisters’ DNA samples will be matched with that of Vaidya. The body parts are in J J hospital for forensic examination. The parts will be handed over to the sisters after the DNA report confirms Vaidya’s identity.
The chainsaw used to cut the body was purchased from a hardware store in Bhayander (East) on June 4, said the police. He is yet to be questioned. There is no clarity on the motive behind the murder. The police are not ruling out domestic violence as assault marks were found on portions of the limbs seized by the cops. The police said they will record the statement of Sane’s relatives too.
Sane has been changing his statements, said the cops. He claimed to be suffering from a life-threatening illness, but no medical documents have been found from his flat. He told the investigators that he planned to commit suicide after disposing of the body parts. He is suspected to have carried some of the body parts in a backpack before dumping them. They exact spots are still not known.
With inputs from Abhilash Botekar in Nashik