Residents of Mumbai society had contacted police six months ago
UNATTENDED Residents say there was no response when they visited Sahani for payment of dues
Members of the society where the skeletal remains of 63-year-old Asha Sahani were found on Saturday said they had contacted the police around six months ago, telling them about how they had been unable to get in touch with her for some time.
One of the residents, who did not wish to be named, told HT that the last maintenance bill Sahani paid was in April 2016.
“Around February 2017, some of us went and knocked on her door. When no one responded, we informed the police,” he said.
The Oshiwara police, however, denied receiving any such complaint from the residents.
Sahani, 63, lived alone in a flat on the 10th floor of Bellscot Tower in Lokhandwala in Andheri, Oshiwara (West).
The resident cited above also said they did not have the contact number of the woman’s son Rituraj, who lives in the US. The residents then made enquiries and one of them contacted him through email. “We did tell him that there had been no response from his mother,” he said, to which the son responded that his mother had not been in touch with him since last April.
Rituraj told the residents his mother had planned to shift to
spoke to his mother on the phone, 43-year-old Rituraj Sahani returned home from America to find her skeleton in their posh Oshiwara flat on Sunday. Asha Sahani, 63, was living alone in her flat on the 10th floor of Bellscot Tower in Andheri (West).
at an IT company in the US, where he lives with his wife.
to meet his mother an old-age home, and had therefore asked him not to be concerned about her.
Many questioned the lack of stench from her house. However, a resident said the society has a stinking nullah nearby, suggesting its smell overpowered that from the dead body.
Police said that Sahani’s maid and driver had quit after her either once a year or every six months. He last spoke to her in April last year. He claims that he has no relatives in the city
Mumbai around 3.30 pm. When he rang the doorbell of the flat, she did not respond.
from the inside and so he asked a key maker to help him open the door, added the official. On entering, he saw that his mother’s body had completely decomposed and only her skeleton had remained. husband’s death in 2013 and since then she lived alone.
Senior inspector Subhash Khanvilkar refuted the residents’ claim that they had contacted the police six months ago.
“We came to know about her on Saturday when her son contacted us,” he said. “Based on the preliminary inquiry, we don’t suspect foul play. But we have sent the remains of the body for chemical analysis.”
Khanvilkar said in her last conversation with Rituraj, Sahani had asked him not to worry about her as she would soon shift to an old-age home.
Deputy commissioner of police Paramjit Singh Dahiya too said they suspect any foul play. “But we have been won- dering about the stench and how no one in the society smelled anything. The flat is not properly ventilated and could have masked the smell of the corpse.”
“Rituraj is Sahani’s son from her first marriage and has been living in the US for a long time.”
“We are checking if he came to Mumbai on Saturday afternoon,” a police official said.