The victim's sister broke down while recording her statement, police said (File)
One of the sisters of 32-year-old Saraswati Vaidya, who was allegedly killed and chopped into pieces by her 56-year-old live-in partner Manoj Sane, got emotional after seeing a photograph of Ms Vaidya's long hair that the accused had cut and kept on the kitchen platform in their flat.
According to Mira-Bhayandar, Vasai-Virar Police, she broke down while recording her statement. During their investigation into Ms Vaidya's death, police found out that she has four sisters and three of them recorded their statements.
Ms Vaidya's sisters confronted accused Manoj Sane for the first time after the murder and police said they were all furious and urged the police to make such a strong case that he gets the strictest punishment.
One of the sisters, after seeing a photograph of Ms Vaidya's long hair, broke down and recalled she used to love her long hair, police said.
During the course of the investigation as police scanned Sane's mobile, they found that the accused used to watch porn on a regular basis and had jotted down some porn sites names on a paper which was also recovered by the police.
Police said that they will soon interrogate Manoj Sane by him making him sit in front of Ms Vaidya's sisters and a cross-examination of his answers will be done. Police officials said that the accused was being questioned for several hours daily, but he kept changing his statements.
Police said that after allegedly murdering Ms Vaidya, he had taken pictures of the body and also did many Google searches to find out how to dispose of the body.
The accused has made Google searches to gather information about what should be done to avoid the foul smell coming from a dead body and bought five bottles of Nilgiri oil from a shop in his area.
On June 4, after the murder, the accused had bought an electric wood cutter (tree cutter) from a local hardware shop, which he used to chop down the body parts. The chain of this saw had come off during use, and after that, he took it to for repair to the same shop from where he had bought it. As Sane had cleaned the cutter completely, no one got any clue of what work he was using the machine.
Police said it will send the DNA samples of Ms Vaidya and her close relatives to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) today.
As the accused has accepted that he married Ms Vaidya in a temple in Borivali, police are trying to verify the location of the temple and the priest who got them married. Along with this, the police will be looking for any other witnesses of their marriage.
It has come to light that the couple had hidden their marriage from their acquaintances due to their age difference. Manoj Sane had been staying with Ms Vaidya in the rental flat in the Akashganga building in Mira Road area over the past three years.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)