TEAM HERALD
VASCO/PANJIM: The Vasco double murder case was solved when Pratima Naik, the lone surviving adult in the murder of her sister-in-law, Neha, and their mother-in-law, Usha, was arrested late Monday
Pratima, who was taken to the Vasco police station on Monday evening as part of ongoing police investigations, later spilled the beans and confessed to have plotted the murder of Neha and Usha, police sources told Herald.
She has been arrested under Section 302 (murder), while her two accomplices are still at large and efforts are on to nab them. One of the two killers was reportedly in a relationship with Pratima.
Sources said that the needle of suspicion had always pointed towards Pratima, as her
statements were inconsistent with the murder in their flat at Mangor Hill, Vasco, in the wee hours of Friday.
Police sources revealed that the autopsy reports on the two bodies had conflicted with the sequence of events that was narrated by Pratima. Pratima is also likely to be charged under Section 120B (criminal conspiracy), sources added.
What pointed to the murder being an inside job was the recovery of the ‘lost keys of the flat’ where the murder occurred and also some gold, which was reported stolen at the time of the murder in the flat itself.
This raised doubts on the theory that the keys of the flat had been stolen on Thursday, the evening prior to the murder. Given the fact that there was no forced entry, it was presumed at the time that the killers had gained access to the flat keys by allegedly posing as cylinder technicians on Thursday evening.
Earlier, IGP Sunil Garg interrogated Pratima for nearly two hours and the police also summoned her family members for interrogation. While IGP Garg interrogated Pratima, Crime Branch SP Kartik Kashyap questioned her parents and brother.
