The Thane rural police on Tuesday cracked the rape and murder case of 19-year-old engineering student, whose body was found close to the tracks near the Asangaon railway station on September 7. The accused, a 33-year-old man, who is a farm labourer, had been watching the victim take the abandoned road everyday and hatched a plan to rape her taking advantage of the deserted area.
According to the Shahapur police, Ashok Baban Mukne works in the small farms close to the tracks and also sold plants and leaves in Byculla, which he plucked from nearby forests. “He had been watching the girl take the road near the tracks everyday at around 5 pm when he decided to rape her. She used to take the isolated road near the tracks to head from her residence to her college. On the day of the incident on September 5, he began to follow the girl, intercepted her, gagged her with a cloth suspected to have been dipped in chloroform and then allegedly forced himself upon her. He then murdered the girl and fled from the spot taking her SIM card,” said senior PI Sunil Wadke of Shahapur police station.
Her body was found near the railway tracks at Savroli near Shahapur on Saturday morning, following which the police initiated investigations. The girl was a student of the Industrial Training Institute.