Rajkot: A five-year-old girl was allegedly murdered by her father, who decked up her body and placed it in the refrigerator before taking his own life, in Hadida village of Amreli district’s Savarkundla taluka late on Wednesday night.Preliminary investigation and suicide notes recovered indicated that the 40-year-old man, Kishore Dhanak, took the gruesome step out of financial crisis stemming from investment in a construction site. He allegedly smothered his daughter Himanshi and then hanged himself to death in another room.Late on Wednesday night, Hadida sarpanch called the police, informing them about the deaths. When cops reached there, they found Dhanak hanging and three suicide notes on the cot.One of the notes mentioned that he had killed his daughter and placed the body in the refrigerator.His wife Manju had gone to her aunt’s house on Sept 14. When she returned the next day, she found the house locked. Dhanak told her on the phone that he was at a friend’s house in Mahuva and asked her to go to her parental home in Dadhia.On Sept 16, he told Manju that he had gone to Mahuva in adjoining Bhavnagar district to collect money and later asked her to start for home. When he did not contact her again till evening, she sent her brother Ghanshyam to check on them. Ghanshyam found the house locked and received no response despite calling out to them.Manju, her brother and father subsequently reached the house. After being alerted by a neighbour, the sarpanch was called and the door was opened.In one note, Dhanak referred to around Rs 7.25 lakh due to him from the construction project and said he had also invested personal loan money in it.In another note, he reportedly admitted to killing his daughter by covering her mouth and said he did so because he feared she would suffer without him. The third note contained an apology and, on its reverse side, reportedly stated that he had kept his daughter’s body in the refrigerator.Police also found that Dhanak had worn gloves on his hands and feet and covered his face with a cloth before taking his own life.Girl’s head covered with chunri, tulsi leaves placed in mouthPL Chaudhary, inspector, Savarkundla Rural police station, said when the girl’s body was recovered from the refrigerator, her father had placed tulsi leaves in her mouth, covered her head with a chunri and put a garland around her neck. “There were signs of some kind of celebration in the room where Dhanak was found hanging. The room had been decorated with colourful balloons and kites,” he said.Investigators are now examining whether Dhanak had celebrated an occasion with his daughter shortly before allegedly killing her, and are trying to establish what happened in the house before the tragedy.
