Mumbai:
Hours after Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Baburao Gaikwad committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in his office last afternoon, his colleagues got down to investigating whether the 52-year-old was a victim of blackmail.
Gaikwad had received 29 calls on his cellphone, most of them from the same number, minutes before he decided to take his life.
According to a senior police officer from the Dahisar division, who is a close colleague of Gaikwad, the ACP was being blackmailed by a woman from Gorai with whom he was allegedly having an affair.
Months into their relationship, the woman and her husband claimed to have taped the ACP having sex with her and told Gaikwad that they would make the tapes public unless he acceded to their demands.
"Gaikwad was scared that his family would come to know about his affair, which could also ruin his career, and agreed to send Rs 25,000 per month to the woman and her husband.
He would also occasionally buy their monthly ration for them. However, they had been getting more and more aggressive in their demands lately," said the officer.
"Gaikwad's fears were heightened after the Arun Borude case was highlighted by the media and he was afraid that he would end up becoming another Borude if the tapes were made public.
He had been depressed for some time but none of us knew he was feeling suicidal," he added.
According to the officer, Gaikwad was in a weekly review meeting with senior officers, including Police Commissioner Sanjeev Dayal, last afternoon, which stretched longer than scheduled.
He was supposed to go meet the woman and her husband around 2 pm but could not do so because the meeting was still going on.
The woman kept calling him and when he finally answered the call after coming out of the meeting at 2.30 pm, she was enraged and threatened to make the tapes public right away.
This scared Gaikwad and he asked an orderly for his revolver. He then closed the door, raised the 9 mm calibre revolver to his temple and pressed the trigger.
An IPS officer from the 1981 batch, Gaikwad was due to retire within seven months and is survived by his wife, a mentally unstable son and two daughters.
A senior officer said they are trying to gather evidence against the woman and she may be arrested soon.
Additional Commissioner of Police (North region) Ramrao Pawar said, "We are investigating all the angles in the case as the motive behind the suicide is still not clear."
Another theory doing the rounds at the Dahisar police station was that Gaikwad committed suicide because he was reprimanded by senior police officers at the review meeting.
"Senior officers are mounting excessive pressure on the depleted police force and junior officers are humiliated at meetings without sound reason," said an officer, on condition of anonymity.
While some officials said that Sanjeev Dayal had also reprimanded Gaikwad at the meeting, the police chief denied this.
"Gaikwad was present in the meeting but I did not interact with him today. We did not have a discussion," said Dayal.