Trip to Telangana was a lie: Man drowns daughter in canal to stay eligible for panchayat poll; how WhatsApp pic exposed the crime | Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar News

HYDERABAD/CHHATRAPATI SAMBHAJINAGAR: A father of three aspiring to contest the upcoming panchayat elections in Maharashtra, despite being ineligible under the two-child norm, allegedly murdered one of his six-year-old twin daughters by drowning her in a Telangana canal, the police said Monday after his arrest in Nizamabad.Pandurang Kondamangale, a resident of Kerur village in Maharashtra’s Nanded, was traced after a Telangana police constable uploaded a picture of an unidentified child’s body found in the Nizamsagar canal as his WhatsApp status and appealed for leads.The image, shared by colleagues in other police stations, led to a breakthrough within hours. A police officer from Mukhed taluka in Maharashtra contacted Nizamabad’s Bodhan police station and identified the girl as Prachi, the “missing” daughter of barber Pandurang from Kerur.Pandurang’s allegedly inconsistent responses prompted investigators to check his mobile tower locations, which confirmed that he had visited Telangana last week. After a Telangana police team reached his door on Monday to interrogate him, he broke down and confessed to killing Prachi, an officer said.“Pandurang, who also has a son, decided to kill Prachi to realise his political ambitions. He secretly travelled to Talengana with his child and drowned her in the Nizamsagar on Jan 29,” the officer told TOI.The outgoing sarpanch of Kerur, Ganesh Shinde, was also arrested on charges of helping Pandurang plot his daughter’s murder. Ganesh had encouraged Pandurang to contest the panchayat elections. Nizamabad police commissioner P Sai Chaitanya said the duo initially tried to give Prachi up for adoption. “When that failed, they allegedly conspired to kill Prachi.”When contacted, the Nanded superintendent of police Abinash Kumar told TOI, “The case is registered in the Bodhan town police station of Telangana’s Nizamabad district. They are investigating the case. A Nanded police team had initially apprehended the accused. At that time, the accused had claimed that he did what he did because of financial constraints. He also said both his daughters were facing health issues. This was just the preliminary interrogation, and nothing could be taken on record as the case was registered in Bodhan. The accused had also changed his version several times. Now, we are not privy to the case details, as the case is being handled by the Nizamabad police.”