Pune, Jul 22 (IANS): In another chilling crime, a man and his friend allegedly dumped the body of a woman, who died from a purportedly botched-up abortion in Thane, into a river here and also mercilessly flung in her two minor kids, a police official said.

The Talegaon MIDC Police Station have arrested the two accused – Gajendra Dagadkhair, who reportedly admitted to having an affair with the woman, plus his accomplice Ravikant Gaikwad, police station official Suresh P. Jadhav said.

"They were arrested and produced before a Magistrate court here on Monday and it sent them to police custody till July 30," Jadhav told IANS.

The shocking triple-murders took place over three days (July 6-9) with the body of the woman – Samreen Nissar Nevrekar, 25 – dumped into the Indrayani River, and then her children, Ishan, 5, and Ijan, 2, also flung into the same river. However, nothing was known about the crime for a few days till her parents, Ghulam Gavandi and his wife Fazina Gavandi lodged a ‘missing’ complaint for their daughter and the Talegaon MIDC Police launched a search for her and her two kids.

After making detailed inquiries in the neighbourhood, the investigators learnt that Samreen had been separated from her husband but was in an alleged romantic affair with a youth living in the vicinity, the prime accused Dagadkhair, who was detained on Sunday.

His sustained questioning by the Talegaon MIDC Police team unravelled the ghastly triple-murder crime and the entire circumstances leading to it during the three days last fortnight.

Dagadkhair, in his statement to the police, admitted that he was in a romantic liaison with Samreen and she became pregnant a few months ago, Investigating Officer Shyam Mhaske told IANS. Panicking at the unwanted development, Dagadkhair convinced her to accompany his friend Gaikwad and undergo an abortion at a private hospital in Thane on July 6.

Gaikwad took Samreen along with her two kids in his car to a Thane hospital and got her admitted there for the abortion, said the official. However, since she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, the woman succumbed after a couple of days though details of the hospital where the procedure was performed and the exact causes of her death are still being investigated.

Shaken by her death, Dagadkhair sought Gaikwad’s help to dispose of her body which they took in his car to an isolated spot along the Indrayani River near Induri village and threw it in. Seeing this, the two minor children started crying, howling and screaming, and enraged by the ruckus, Dagadkhair-Gaikwad even flung them one after the other – alive – to their watery graves. Mhaske said that the police have not recovered the bodies of the trio till now as the Indrayani River is in a swollen state after last week’s heavy rains in the region, and it is feared they may have been washed away downstream.

The police team, led by API Mhaske, is still questioning the accused duo for more details, including about the Thane clinic where the abortion was allegedly performed without taking into account the risks to the woman’s life, and the entire crime sequence that has shocked Pune.