In an early morning, gruesome incident, a policeman shot at his father-in-law and mother-in-law at his in-laws’ residence in Ramkrishnabagh colony and later shot at himself with his official rifle.
The mother-in-law of the police constable died while undergoing treatment at a private hospital, while the condition of his father-in-law was stated to be critical till filing this report. On the other hand, the condition of the accused who was operated upon at MY hospital on Monday, has been stated to be out of danger.
The incident occurred at around 7.45 am on Monday when the accused police constable Ashok Ganthe posted at Pandharinath police station after the end of his night shift.
He drove straight to his in-laws’ house at Ramkrishnabagh colony on his motorcycle carrying his duty rifle of 303 bore.
After reaching his in-laws’ house, he shot at his father-in-law Mansharam Pagare (who was reading a newspaper outside his room) with his rifle. Hearing the gun shot, his mother-in-law Gauri Bai came out of her room. Seeing his mother-in-law, the police jawan shot at her also. Both of them bleeding profusely fell on the ground.
After the incident, the police jawan fled his in-laws’ house and reached the residence of a traffic department hawaldar Biharilal in the locality and shot himself with his rifle in his stomach. Soon after receiving bullets he fell on the ground. The bullet piercing through his stomach and back hit one Amit Tiwari, son of Biharilal who was washing his motorcycle and he too sustained injuries.
The broad daylight shoot-out incident created panic in the locality with people hearing the sound of gunfire rushing to the incident site.
In the meantime, after being informed about the matter, ASP Rajesh Sahay, CSP Vijay Nagar KK Sharma and Vijay Nagar police station TI along with a posse of police jawans rushed to the incident site to take stock of the situation. The police jawans immediately rushed Ashok Ganthe to MY hospital where he was operated upon. Police also recovered a suicide note from his pocket wherein he held himself responsible for the incident.
The other three injured persons, including the accused’s in-laws and Amit Tiwari, were rushed to lifeline hospital.
Police said the accused was reportedly peeved with his in-laws for lodging a case of dowry torture against him with Vijay Nagar police the other day as the latter had suspected the character of his wife and inflicted mental torture on her.
Ashok was married to Varsha, daughter of Mansharam Pagare in January 2011. The couple has a two-year-old daughter Awantika. Sources informed that the accused suspecting the character of his wife used to lock her up in the house from outside before going on his duty. The couple used to have frequent fights over this issue. Sources informed that Varsha had got so much frustrated with her perpetual torture that she returned to her parents’ house about a year back. In the meantime, she wrote numerous complaints against her husband to the Chief Minister, the Prime Minister, Indore range IG, DIG and other senior officials but no action was taken. Not able to get solution to her problems, she finally lodged a complaint against her husband with Vijay Nagar police station the other day. Reading complaint against him in the newspaper, prompted the accused to take recourse to such an extreme step, police sources in formed.
Today’s shooting incident is reminiscent of the last year’s Bakhatgarh Tower’s mass murder when a doctor, Dr Rohit Trivedi had shot dead his wife Priyanka, his father-in-law PC Pande, mother-in-law Gayatri before killing himself. The incident had occurred in flat no. 302 at Bakhatgrh Tower in September last year. Police had also recovered the body of the five-year-old daughter of Dr Trivedi, who had apparently estranged relations with his wife. His in-laws had come to his flat to sort out the differences between their daughter and son-in-law.