Father strangles infant girl to death

A 30-year-old man in Virar who allegedly strangulated his 45-day-old daughter to death and went absconding has been arrested. The man killed his daughter because he had wanted a son, the police said.

Kailash Bhande (30) a resident of Phoolpada in Virar (east), murdered his daughter on the night of May 15 after telling his wife Vaishnavi to go out of the house, sources said.

Bhande, who works at an electric switch manufacturing unit, would also assault his wife after getting drunk, said PI Yunus Shaikh of Virar police station.

The girl was born on March 30 but as Bhande was expecting a boy, he started to torture his wife, sources said. After killing the infant, Bhande threatened Vaishnavi with dire consequences if she told anyone about the killing. The morning after the death of the child, Bhande took the body to the Primary Health Centre (PHC) in Virar where he gave in writing that they would not want a post-mortem as the child was only a month old and then buried her. Two days after the death of the child, Bhande took his wife to Churchgate station and disappeared after abandoning her on the pretext of getting drinking water. Not seeing her husband in sight, Vaishnavi continued the journey and reached Akola to stay with her parents.

After staying there for three weeks, she narrated the incident to her parents and they lodged a complaint with the Virar police.

“Based on Vaishnavi’s complaint we registered cases of murder, destroying evidence and giving false information to the police,” said Mr Shaikh.

“Next we told Vaishnavi to talk with Bhande, who was hiding in Virar and then we arrested him by calling him to the police station in the pretext of taking his distressed wife who was present with us, back home, ” he further added.