PUNE: Satara police arrested a techie and a police sub-inspector on Saturday in connection with the alleged rape and abetment of suicide of a 28-year-old doctor employed at Phaltan subdistrict hospital.The brother and sister of the techie told TOI that contrary to reports, he was not arrested from a farmhouse in Pune but from their house in Phaltan after being asked to surrender.
“We had called him and told him to surrender. His social media records and call details have been given to the police. My brother never called the doctor. Instead, it was the doctor who used to call him repeatedly and harass him,” said the brother.The doctor had been paying a monthly rent of Rs 4,000 to the techie’s family and had been residing at the house for the past year. The techie’s younger sister said, “Last month, my brother came to Phaltan to recover from dengue infection. The doctor treated him, and they exchanged numbers. Around 15 days ago, she proposed marriage to him. He turned down the proposal. During Diwali, she seemed tense, but we thought it was work-related. She was like family to us, and our mother treated her as her own daughter.”Police said the arrested techie claimed that the doctor had harassed him by insisting he marry her and maintain a physical relationship. “A large number of chats and call recordings between the accused and the deceased have been found in which she is speaking about stress, pressure, etc” said a police officer.A senior police officer said the techie was arrested early in the morning, while the sub-inspector surrendered to Phaltan rural police late at night. Satara SP Tushar Doshi added, “A court remanded the techie in four-day police custody till Oct 28.”The police are also probing whether the sub-inspector — who hails from Beed, the same district as the doctor — had any prior relationship with her. After the doctor’s suicide, a note was found on her palm naming the sub-inspector and the landlord’s son as responsible for driving her to take the extreme step.Based on this note and evidence such as WhatsApp chats, an FIR was registered under Sections 64 (rape) and 108 (abetment of suicide) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).SP Doshi said, “A woman ended her life, and there might be some truth to her allegations. We are trying to establish everything. It is a challenging case as she had not complained earlier. Technical evidence and WhatsApp chats will be verified, but whether there was any blackmail angle will emerge through the investigation.”
