No body and murder weapon, how cop was convicted in missing Mumbai policewoman’s murder

On April 5 this year, a Panvel court convicted Ashwini’s senior, former police inspector Abhay Kurundkar, 61, and two others for her murder in April 2016. The quantum of sentence for Abhay, who was in a relationship with Ashwini, and the others will be pronounced on April 11 this year — exactly nine years to the day Ashwini was last seen alive.

A fight, a murder and a creek on the city’s outskirt

According to court records, Abhay murdered Ashwini at his Thane residence on April 11, 2016, during a suspected fight over her demand that they get married. Abhay is married and has two children.

Abhay, with help from his driver and a friend — the other convicts — allegedly dismembered her body and dumped it at Bhayander Creek, around 20 km from his house. To destroy all traces of Ashwini’s DNA, he allegedly even got his car and house repainted, according to police and court documents.

What makes the conviction in the case stand out is that in the absence of a body and with Ashwini’s mobile phone and the murder weapon yet to be traced, police and the prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence to prove that Abhay had murdered Ashwini and the co-accused had helped him destroy the evidence.

According to court records, Ashwini lived alone on rent in Navi Mumbai at the time of her disappearance. A few weeks before she was last seen alive, she had applied for a 10-day leave to attend a Vipassana session in Igatpuri, Nashik.

When she failed to report for work after 10 days, her colleagues didn’t think much of it “since she had been stressed for months and was having relationship problems”. On June 14, 2016, two months later, her family filed a missing person complaint with the Navi Mumbai police.

Abhay Kurundkar (left), Ashwini’s senior and a former police inspector, was convicted by a local court recently for her murder.

A missing wife and a fight for an investigation

Her estranged husband Raju says the Navi Mumbai police made “no effort” to investigate the case, prompting him to approach the Bombay High Court.

“The court directed the commissioner to form a team of senior officers. Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Sangeeta Alphonso started making a headway in the case, but was transferred. By October 2016, Abhay, who was on leave since February 2016, was back on duty,” Raju says.

As public pressure mounted, the case was raised in the Maharashtra Assembly and in December 2016, Abhay was arrested. Despite the initial progress, Raju says, the probe came to a standstill.

In 2018, he launched a campaign to seek justice for Ashwini – from meeting Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to making representations to then Chief Justice of India (CJI) and then President Ram Nath Kovind.

“In my letters to the CJI and the President, I sought permission to die since the probe had stalled. They wrote to the Maharashtra Chief Secretary and ACP Alphonso was brought back and asked to oversee the case for three months,” Raju says.

Days after ACP Alphonso took charge, Abhay’s driver Kundan Bhandari and his friend Mahesh Falnikar were arrested. Mahesh’s arrest on February 26, 2018, proved to be the first breakthrough — he confessed to helping Abhay with Ashwini’s murder and dumping two gunny sacks with her remains, weighed down by 50-kg iron weights, at the Bhayander Creek. On February 28, 2018, the charge of murder was added to the list of offences against Abhay, Kundan and Mahesh.

No body and no hopes of a win

Though the charge sheet was filed on May 19, 2018, Ashwini’s family had slim hopes of securing any conviction since her body and mobile phone had not been found.

Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Pradip Gharat says, “The lack of a body made this a challenging case. However, we used the principle of corpus delicti, through which a crime can be proved via facts and circumstances forming concrete evidence, to make our case. We also proved that the main accused’s alibi was false — he (Abhay) had claimed that he was on duty on the day of the crime (April 11, 2016). There was no reason for a false alibi if he was innocent.”

The prosecution also proved that Ashwini was murdered on April 11, 2016, the day she was last seen alive. Though her family did not name any suspects initially, her abrupt disappearance and Abhay’s conduct, such as his refusal to answer their queries, made them suspicious.

The prosecution also relied heavily on the call data records (CDR) of the victim and the three convicts to build a sequence of events. Ashwini’s domestic help told the police that on April 9, 2016, she told her that she was going out of town the next day for a family ceremony. However, their CDR showed that Abhay and Ashwini were at her Navi Mumbai house from 11.13 am to 7.04 pm on April 10, 2016.

The CDR also showed that on April 11, 2016, Abhay and Ashwini were at his Thane residence from 8 pm to 11 pm. Though Ashwini’s phone was switched off after that, Abhay’s CDR put him at the creek, located on the outskirts of the city, later that night.

Between April 13 and April 14, 2016, SPP Gharat said, messages were sent from Ashwini’s phone to her family, claiming that she was going for a Vipassana course. Her phone’s location — as well as Abhay’s — put her in South Mumbai’s Tardeo between April 13 and April 14, 2016.

In his final arguments, Gharat submitted that Abhay had Ashwini’s phone, which he switched on temporarily after her death to send these messages to “mislead” her family into believing that she was alive.

Despite the lack of a body, Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Pradip Gharat made his case using the principle of corpus delicti.

Of texts and ‘typos’

ACP Alphonso told The Indian Express that the language used in these texts was also a “strong piece of evidence”. She says the report by Truth Labs, an independent forensic laboratory, had pointed out that while Ashwini used ‘U’ for ‘you’, the messages allegedly sent by Abhay from her phone used a ‘Y’ for ‘you.

“When he sent messages to her boss and relatives claiming that she was going for (a) Vipassana (course), the language used was different from hers,” ACP Alphonso says.

The prosecution also punctured holes in Abhay’s alibi of night duty on April 11, 2016, the day Ashwini was last seen. Relying on witness statements from officials at nine police stations, the prosecution said neither was Abhay at the police station that day, nor was he on patrol duty.

According to protocol, an officer usually calls up the control room to inform them about the end of their patrol duty. Though Abhay called up the control room — to create the impression that he was on duty near his Thane house — his CDR puts him near the Bhayander creek. The prosecution submitted that there was no explanation on this attempt to falsify his duty log.

After Abhay’s friend Mahesh told the police that they had dumped Ashwini’s body in the creek, Navy divers, and later a Navi Mumbai-based diving service, were hired to look for her remains, but in vain. The Navi Mumbai police also turned to the Institute of Oceanography for help.

The institute stated that while the body may no longer be at the creek, save for some bones, they were hopeful of finding the 50-kg iron weights used to keep her remains submerged.

Based on the spot from where her body was thrown from a bridge, the institute zeroed in on some fixed points in the seabed where they suspected the weights would be found. Though the weights were not found, the report mentioned the presence of iron in the seabed at these spots, ACP Alphonso says.

A Vipassana theory vs house rent

During the trial, the defence claimed that Ashwini had left home for six months for the spiritual practice of Vipassana and had later renounced the world without informing anybody. Dismissing these claims in his final arguments, SPP Gharat said Ashwini was upset over losing her daughter’s custody to her estranged husband. He said it was inconceivable why a distraught mother would not attempt to contact her daughter at all since April 2016, or her father and brother, with whom she spoke every few weeks.

The police relied on other circumstantial evidence to disprove the defence’s “renunciation” theory. These included Ashwini’s failure to inform anyone about “her spiritual journey”, or to vacate her rented house or pay advance rent, something she did diligently. The prosecution also said it was impossible to believe that Ashwini would not go back to her house from Abhay’s to take her belongings for a six-month stay at the Vipassana centre.

The prosecution also presented statements to prove that Kundan, Abhay’s driver, had helped him destroy evidence. Besides repainting Abhay’s Thane flat between April 12 and April 20, 2016, to remove all DNA traces, Kundan had on April 12, 2016, allegedly bought 12 gunny sacks and the two 50-kg iron weights used to submerge Ashwini’s body.

Abhay’s lawyer Vishal Bhanushali says, “This was an intensely scrutinised and emotionally charged case, involving voluminous evidence, complex factual matrices and sustained legal argumentation over several years.”