Tainted Borude may have prompted ACP Gaikwad’s suicide?

Was fugitive cop Arun Borude’s tainted image on his mind when 57- year- old Assistant Commissioner of Police ( ACP) Baburao Gaikwad decided to commit suicide? Well, Gaikwad had attended the monthly crime conference at the Azad Maidan police club the night before, after which he headed for his office where he shot himself.

In the conference, an example was made out of tainted cop Borude, who allegedly raped a minor and was dismissed from service for evading arrest in the second week of November. The senior officers had warned members of the force that such indiscipline would not be tolerated.

This may have catapulted Gaikwad into taking the drastic step, as he probably realised that 42- year- old Meena Kharad, his close acquaintance who had been allegedly blackmailing him for a long time and would regularly extort money from him every month, would tarnish his image and bring him into problems.

Meena, a resident of Gorai is married to a local civil works contractor and has two children. Meena while explaining about the several missed calls left on Gaikwad’s mobile phone by her, said, “ After I saw the news on television that Gaikwad had shot himself, I called him several times.” She further added that her family knew Gaikwad for the last 20 years and that they maintained good relations with him.

Her Husband Ravindra Kharat said, “ The media reports are rubbish and Gaikwad was suffering from high blood pressure and so I had fixed a doctor’s appointment for him on December 15.” The police suspect that Meena has a role to play in Gaikwad’s suicide and would act accordingly once his family members get over their grief.

However, Gaikwad’s close kin, who are still in a state of shock, have demanded a CBI probe into the incident. Meanwhile, the Mumbai police are tightlipped about the motive behind the ACP’s alleged suicide and refused to either confirm vital facts or comment the incident.

On Tuesday, Additional Commissioner of Police, North Region, Ramrao Pawar, who had briefed the media after the incident on Monday, refrained to comment, when asked, whether abetment of suicide could have been a possibility.

“ We have filed an Accidental Death Report and are probing all the angles.” said a tight- lipped Pawar. Another cop on condition of anonymity said,“ Gaikwad had overheard the conversation I had with a few other cops just before he committed suicide. Rhetorically speaking to my colleagues I said, that I feel like committing suicide due to the unbearable pressure, when Gaikwad called me inside his cabin.”

“ He told me that its part and parcel of the duty and we must not bow down to any conditions and circumstances. But later in the day I learnt that he had committed suicide.”