Mumbai: Laxman Dhangar, an Andheri labourer, has been convicted by a sessions court for the double murder of his wife, Parvati, and their two-year-old son, Akil. After spending ten years in jail, the court found Dhangar guilty of strangling Parvati and subsequently drowning Akil. The prosecution successfully established his involvement not only in the murders but also in concealing the bodies and filing a false missing person report to evade justice.
Key testimony came from the couple’s other son, Anil, who was examined as a child witness. He recounted a quarrel between his parents and stated that Dhangar had pressed his mother’s throat. Public prosecutor Sachiv Jadhav presented the case against Dhangar, leading to this significant legal outcome.
The next morning, on Aug 7, Dhangar took Akil from Ashamma’s house. On Aug 12, police received information that a woman’s decomposed body was lying in bushes near the Wireless Compound. Police reached the spot and found the body of a woman aged about 30 to 35 years.
The prosecution said after Dhangar killed his wife, he then removed her body and dumped it in bushes in the Wireless Compound behind the proposed Khoobchandani Hospital. In the child’s murder trial, Ashamma testified that Dhangar returned without Akil and told her that he had drowned the child in a stream. “The conduct of the accused shows that he knew where he had thrown the dead body and was waiting for somebody to notice it, and only after the arrival of police did he come forward and feign ignorance by explaining that he had already filed missing report of his wife,” the judge said.
In two separate judgements, Judge M Mohiuddin MA sentenced Dhangar to rigorous imprisonment for life for the murders and three years’ rigorous imprisonment for causing disappearance of evidence, with both sentences to run concurrently in the two connected trials. The court noted that Ashamma was crying while giving this evidence. During inquiry, police learnt that Dhangar’s wife had been missing. Dhangar, who was present in the crowd, identified the body as Parvati’s. The court treated that conduct as relevant, observing that Dhangar knew where the body had been thrown. Police also recovered Parvati’s ornaments, including a silver kada and anklets, at Dhangar’s instance from a trunk in Ashamma’s house. The court relied on witness identification of Parvati’s clothes and ornaments found with the body, and rejected the defence objection that the body had not been formally identified at the hospital.
In the wife murder trial, Ashamma did not support the prosecution in court, though her earlier statements before police and the magistrate had implicated Dhangar.
Neighbour Laxmi Poojari told the court that Dhangar used to quarrel with Parvati on that suspicion and, on the night of Aug 6, 2016 took Parvati and both children with him. The court recorded that Dhangar had three wives. First wife Jamlamma and second wife Parvati were sisters and had married Dhangar on the same day with family consent. Later, Dhangar married third wife Ashamma. All lived near each other in Dhangarwadi, Andheri West, and worked as labourers. Parvati had two sons, Anil and Akil.