Naikwadi waterfall of Bhudargad
KOLHAPUR: A 25-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his 23-year-old girlfriend, an engineering student whose body was found nearly 1,000ft below a cliff at Naikwadi waterfalls Maharashtra’s Kolhapur. Police registered a case under section 140(3) of BNS, relating to wrongful confinement. Her marriage had been fixed for Nov 12.
Police came to know of the death Saturday when Sripad Vadar walked into a PS and reported that Tarrannum Naik, a third-year student who lived with her maternal grandmother in Gargoti, had fallen into a gorge from a cliff.
The falls were dry after the monsoon, and no visitors were in the area when the couple reached the spot Friday, police said. Police sent a team to the remote site and retrieved her body. Naikwadi waterfalls are deep inside forested terrain, about 50km from Gargoti. Tarrannum’s last rites were performed at her native Patgaon. Her death sparked protests in Gargoti, where residents marched to police station Sunday and demanded a fast-track trial.
That raised serious doubts and led us to invoke BNS section 103(1) for murder,” Patil said. Because her family had fixed her marriage elsewhere, “He told us they had been in a relationship for five-and-a-half years and were distressed. He claimed she jumped into the gorge, but he lost his nerve at the last moment,” sub-divisional police officer Vivek Patil said.
The couple had decided to die by suicide together, according to him. “The chat history does not support the account he gave us about a suicide pact. The messages suggested Sripad was upset over Tarrannum’s family’s decision to get her married to someone else.