The Satara police on Friday exhumed the body of a sixth victim of Santosh Pol, the so-called “doctor”, from his farm. But, for 10 long years, not a single villager from the area had any inkling about that. On Wednesday, the police exhumed the skeletal remains of yet another body in the ground behind Pol’s poultry farm at Dhom village, nine km from Wai.
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Meanwhile, Pol’s murder spree could date back to some time before 2003 as the police are following up on three more missing persons’ cases and the victims’ may have crossed paths with the killer. Gaikwad, also a resident of Dhom, was a housewife who used to visit Pol as a patient. Earlier, he had told his interrogators that he had thrown Vanita Gaikwads body into backwaters of Dhom reservoir.
“It is believed to be that of Gaikwad. The identity of the skeleton will be ascertained after a DNA test”. Dressed in blue shirt, Pol was calm and remorseless as he guided the police to the burial spot. According to police, they found a skeleton wrapped in a sari from the spot. In fact, the complainants in three cases told the police that their missing kin had either last gone to meet Pol or were taking treatment from him.
However, he later changed his statement and told the cops that he had buried the body of Gaikwad in an open space near his house in the village in August 2006. But, neither police records nor hospital registers had any entry of a body being found from the river. The nurse reportedly told the police about the killing.
She was given anaesthesia and buried in Pol’s farmhouse. “However, today, all the family members are alarmed to find that the doctor whom she trusted had killed her and buried her body only a few metres away from her house”. Her relatives said that on that fateful day, when she stepped out of the house to tie her brother a rakhi, she never returned. “We never had slightest of doubt on Pol as he was pretending to help us in our search for Vanita”, said her brother-in-law Shivaji Gaikwad.
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The missing persons are: Vilas Vishnu Dhage, 45, untraced since 2001; Dipali Krishna Sanas, 21, disappeared since 2002; Mahadeo Sonu Chikane, 47, off-radar since 2012.
