Hired teen assailants, offered Rs 10 lakh: How Panvel woman got mother killed for property control

NAVI MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman allegedly got her mother killed through two teenagers whom she promised to pay Rs 10 lakh. As pre-planned, the duo teenagers strangled her mother at her apartment in Manik Society in Panvel on the evening of Sept 13, according to police. The police arrested the woman and the hired killers on Sunday.
The murder victim has been identified as Priya Naik (44).The arrested accused are her daughter Pranali Naik and the hired killers Vivek Patil (19) and Vishal Pandey (19), both residents of Kon village, Panvel taluka. While Pandey was doing a tailoring course, Vivek Patil did petty jobs. As neither had a source of income, they accepted Pranali's offer, DCP (zone-2) Prashant Mohite said.
Mohite said, "The accused woman (Pranali) was staying with her mother for the past four years after separation from her husband. As Pranali was entirely dependent on her mother for her daily expenses, they used to frequently. Her mother used to advise her to resolve her marital dispute and return to her husband.
She also stopped her from being friends with other men. Hence, Pranali planned to eliminate her mother so that she could alone get control over the apartment and would no longer need to ask for money from her mother. Pranali had introduced her mother to Vivek Patil, whom she had met through a friend — a relative of Vivek Patil. She claimed that Vivek used to do rituals for people to get rid of financial woes."
According to the DCP, on Sept 13, when Priya was alone at home, while her husband was hospitalised for angiography treatment, Vivek Patil and his friend Vishal Pandey went to her apartment (between 6.30 pm and 8.30 pm) pretending to perform the ritual, strangled her with a saree and escaped. "The duo took away the gold ornaments the victm was wearing.
Thereafter, around 8.45 pm, Pranali contacted her neighbours on phone claiming that her mother was not responding to her calls and asked them to check. Later, Pranali reached home and told the police that her mother had consumed rat poison, which was actually forcibly put in her mouth by the duo killers to give an impression that her mother had died by suicide," Mohite said.
Mohite said an accidental death case was registered at Panvel city police station, but the post-mortem report revealed that the victim's cause of death was ‘asphyxia due to ligature strangulation'. Hence, a murder case was registered, and using technical expertise and CCTV footage, the prime suspect turned out to be the victim's daughter Pranali.
After she was detained for an inquiry, she complained of chest pain and was hospitalised. After being discharged from hospital, Pranali was arrested on Sunday/. She has confessed to having hired the duo killers Vivek and Vishal to kill her mother. The three arrested accused have been remanded to police custody till Sept 23."