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What Panvel court said while handing life sentence to decorated cop for murder of lady cop

Abhay Kurundkar received the President’s medal for meritorious service on Republic Day, 2017, after the murder of woman inspector Ashwini Bidre-Gore.

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New Delhi: A Maharashtra court on Monday sentenced President’s medal-recipient ex-inspector Abhay Kurundkar to life imprisonment for the 2016 murder of inspector Ashwini Bidre-Gore, with whom he had an extramarital relationship.

In a 401-page order passed by additional sessions judge K.G. Paldewar, the Panvel sessions court ruled: “In light of [the] evidence of prosecution witnesses, and the prosecution case based on circumstantial evidence as such, all the circumstances consistent with the hypothesis of guilt have been proved beyond all reasonable doubts.”

Sentencing senior police inspector Kurundkar, the court noted that “all the accused in the case shall be convicted” for the offences the police had charged them with.

In the 2016 murder of Ashwini Bidre-Gore, the police charged Abhay Kurundkar in 2017 under Indian Penal Code sections 302, 364, 201, 323, 504, 506 II, 417,465, 468,471, 218, 120B, 34. The sections relate to murder, kidnapping or abduction for murder, disappearing evidence or giving false information to protect the offender, voluntarily causing hurt, intentional insult to provoke breach of peace, criminal intimidation, cheating, forgery, forgery with intent to cheat, using a forged document as genuine, public servant framing incorrect records, criminal conspiracy, and joint liability for criminal acts, respectively.

 Arguments from both sides

The prosecution’s case, in a nutshell, was based on circumstantial evidence. With police inspector Ashwini Bidre-Gore’s body or body parts not found, the prosecution’s case was based on the plea of corpus delicti, referring to the principle that a crime has to be proven to have taken place before convicting a person for committing the same.

The prosecution, in its case, said that though Ashwini Bidre-Gore was married to Raja Gore, she had illicit relations with the accused Abhay Kurundkar, who promised to marry her but then murdered her to get rid of her. The case contended that Kurundkar murdered the woman cop at his flat in the Mukund Plaza building, Ghodbunder, and then cut her body into pieces before disposing of it.

The police had also charged Raja Patil, Kurundkar’s friend and nephew of Maharashtra veteran leader and ex-minister Eknath Khadse. The prosecution’s case was that the two men met in the night and discussed how to hide the body.

After that, Kurundkar, allegedly with the help of his driver, Kundan Namdeo Bhandari, and his friend from his native place, Mahesh Manohar Phalanikar, disposed of the body pieces.

The trio threw her torso and chopped hands and legs into a Vasai creek, argued the prosecution, accusing Kurundkar, along with the other accused, of hatching a criminal conspiracy to murder Bidre-Gore.

Moreover, the prosecution told the court that Abhay Kurundkar, an influential inspector with political connections, was not booked initially, with the police only registering a missing persons case against him.

On the other hand, the defence argued that Ashwini Bidre-Gore was under mental stress due to matrimonial discord with her husband over the custody of her child. To establish its point, the defence said that she visited North India for a long duration for meditation purposes before she went missing.


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Court ruling

In April 2016, after Ashwini Bidre-Gore went missing, her family lodged a missing persons report in July of the same year. However, Kurundkar, a senior police inspector, had enough influence to form a nexus with politicians and stall the inquiry, according to the court order, pronounced on 5 April this year and uploaded on Monday evening—21 April.

The court noted that when the brother and husband of the woman cop eventually approached the Bombay High Court, the police finally took the initiative to book Kurundkar and others. The court also noted that after the 2016 murder on the 11-12 April night, Kurundkar made all efforts to erase the evidence of the crime.

In January 2017, the police booked the accused but arrested Kurundkar only eleven months later, or one-and-a-half years after the murder. By then, the police had made out his involvement in the crime, but his name was still recommended for a President’s medal, signalling his influence.

Taking note that Kurundkar’s brother was an assistant commissioner of police working in Mumbai, the court noted that in 2016, when the murder took place, the brother was serving as a senior inspector in Pune.

Owing to reasons such as Ashwini Bidre-Gore constantly asking Abhay Kurundkar to marry her, there were quarrels between the lovers, the court noted, adding that he also hit her and gave her threats to her life.

By the day of their meeting at Hotel Fountain, Kurundkar had already been fed up with her constant proposals of marriage and demands for money, the court noted, adding that that served as his motive to get rid of her.

The court also rejected the argument by the defence that Ashwini Bidre-Gore went for meditation, given that she told her domestic help that she would return after attending a ceremony in her native place.

Pointing to the prosecution’s examination, the court noted that her workplace, family members, friends, or no other witness claimed to have seen her after 11 April 2016. “All these circumstances are consistent with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused,” the court said.

The police personnel examined by the court also confirmed that Kurundkar was not on patrolling duty that night, the court noted. Another court observation—Kurundkar forged the record of his weekly diary and logbook to stick to the story of being on patrolling duty.

(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)


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