Kidnapping his victims, killing them and burying them at his country home for the past few years – this Maharashtra doctor has confessed to all of it, including admitting to administering lethal overdoses of medicine, the police claimed on Monday.
Now being labelled Dr Death, Santosh Pol has revealed details that perhaps justify the tag.
How Investigations Began
49-year-old Mangal Jedhe, President of the Maharashtra Purva Prathmik Shikshika Sevika Sangh (MPPSSS), disappeared quite suspiciously, leading the police to start investigating the case. This is when the not-so-metaphorical skeletons began coming out of the closet. Jedhe was allegedly kidnapped from the bus stop by Pol and his accomplice Jyoti Mandre.
“She had left Wai for Pune to attend to her daughter’s delivery, but never reached there,” said MPPSSS General Secretary Shaukat Pathan.
A Threat From Pol’s Alleged Lover Led to Her Murder
Jedhe was in touch with Pol, according to police investigations, and after a spat, she threatened to expose him and his alleged criminal activities. This was the trigger that led Pol to her murder, according to his own claims.
Pol and nurse Jyoti Mandre took her to his farmhouse, around 13 km from Wai, where they allegedly administered to her an overdose of a lethal medicine, killed her and buried the body in the farmhouse. Following this, both Pol and Mandre went underground.
Pol has claimed that he was in a relationship with Jedhe and Mandre, but since Jedhe was jealous of his affair with Mandre and threatened to expose them (Pol and Mandre), they decided to eliminate her.
Raking Up Further Details
Pol was tracked down in Dadar in central Mumbai and arrested on 13 August. He has been remanded to police custody for a week, while Mandre was sent to a four-day police custody. This was when Pol confessed that he had actually killed at least five women and one man in the past few years.
Five women were buried at his country home, while one male victim’s body had been thrown into a dam. All the victims were declared ‘missing’ by local authorities. The police are trying to recover the bodies and recover further details of the case.
Besides Jedhe, the missing victims have tentatively been identified as Salma Shaikh, Jagabai Pol, Surekha Chikane, Vanita Gaikwad and Nathmal Bhandare, but police have said that the exact details will be known only after investigation.
Pathan has said that since 2003, at least a dozen women have been reported missing from Wai and the surrounding villages and demanded a police probe into all those cases.
(With inputs from IANS)
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