Fifteen years ago, Saraswati Vaidya was barely 17 and Manoj Sane was 40 years old. Both met each other at a ration shop where Manoj worked. They both were from Ahmednagar. They started meeting frequently and fell in love. Sane had an ITI (Industrial Training Institute) certificate. Saraswati was a school dropout. Sarasvati was from a lower middle-class family and was an orphan; all her sisters stayed in different orphanages, and she was the fourth daughter of her parents. She lost her parents at a very young age. Manoj was well settled by then, and he could provide some comfort to Saraswati. After spending time with each other for months, they decided to get married and stay together.
Saraswati lived in a shelter home, though she had three sisters. When she met Manoj Sane, she decided to live with him. She told people at home that he was her maternal uncle and very wealthy. They moved into Flat No. 704 at the Mira Road apartment building five years ago. They fought, allegedly over Sane’s suspicion that she was cheating on him. Because Sane was now 56 years old and Saraswati was 32, there was a huge age gap between them.
Saraswati and Manoj Sane were secretly married at a temple. She later told her sisters about the wedding, but the couple didn’t tell anyone else because of the huge age difference. The two kept to themselves when they moved into the apartment on Meera Road three years ago. They visited Saraswati’s ashram with gifts for the children. Sane used to earn a minimum salary, but he was getting a rent of around Rs 35,000 from his flat number 701 in a seven-storey Sane Residency in Borivali. The tenant, who has been living there for three years, was quoted as saying that advance cheques were given to Sane, who deposited them every month. The property on which the building came up in 2008 belonged to Sane’s family. Four flats in the building belong to his relatives.
When they moved to rent the flat, the rent agreement was signed by Sane, and there was no mention of Vaidya. Meanwhile, after some time managing the home, paying huge rent, and experiencing joblessness, financial issues lead to domestic violence. They both frequently started fighting with each other. Sane used to earn around Rs 5,000 a month at the shop, while they paid Rs 10,000 in rent. Vaidya is believed to have expressed concerns about household expenses. Sane used to work and had been shut down since May 29, when the license of the store — The Villagers Consumers Cooperative Society Ltd.—was cancelled, forcing him to stay at home. Sane, who lost his job at a ration shop after its license was cancelled last month, Vaidya, who was an orphan and did not work, was financially dependent on Sane.
Vaidya was very possessive in nature and suspected that he was being unfaithful to her whenever he returned home late, and he used to suspect that Saraswati was cheating on him. They used to keep on fighting; the couple lived a very private life. They never spoke to their neighbors and remained largely unknown in their apartment building. Sane told police that in 2008 he discovered that he was HIV positive, and since then he has been on medication.
One fine day, after a continued verbal spat, Manoh strangled Saraswati to death. He would have thought chopping, boiling, and roasting” the body parts of dead live-in partners would keep him away from the eye of the law; it was the “hunt for a dead rat” that finally trapped him in a murder case. Manoj Sane killed his live-in partner and then chopped off her body. He purchased a Rs 4,000-worth chainsaw the same day and got down to slicing the body, which he then pressure cooked and roasted on the gas stove. Police have recovered the victim’s legs and collected two bags of cooked body parts.
The blood-stained 200-volt electric chainsaw as well as the bill for the purchase made from a hardware store in Bhayander (East) have been seized. A tile cutter machine worth Rs 1,000, also purchased by Sane, has been recovered too.
The residents on the seventh floor of the Geeta Akashdeep building in the Geeta Nagar area of Mira Road started scanning their homes and the building terrace for a dead rat after the foul smell on their floor became unbearable. They even knocked on Sane’s door with an appeal for a similar check of his flat, but got no response. Sane slept in one of the two bedrooms while the body parts lay in the kitchen and the other bedroom. The apartment where the accused and the victim stayed belongs to Sonam Builders and had been given to them for the first time.
Sane has claimed to have gotten ideas from the Shraddha Walker murder case. While food blogger Aaftab Poonawala, accused of similarly killing and chopping the body of his live-in partner, call center employee Shraddha Walkar, in May last year, had used a refrigerator to store the body parts, Sane purchased five bottles of nilgiri (eucalyptus) oil to delay the body’s decomposition. Sane slept in one of the two bedrooms while the body parts lay in the kitchen and the other bedroom.
