WAI (MAHA): Satara police today claimed that Santosh Pol, accused of killing six people including five women between 2003 and 2016, did not appear to be a psychopath and murdered three of them for financial gain.
Pol, a 42-year-old doctor from Wai, murdered three of the victims -- Surekha Chikane, Jagabai Pol and Nathmal Bhandari -- with the motive of financial gain, while Salma Shaikh and Mangala Jedhe were put to death as he feared they would spill the beans about his crimes, police said.
"Dr Pol is not a psychopath, rather he is mentally quite stable, and cleverly executed all these killings in cold blood. He is revealing a lot of new things in the interrogation, but all that needs to be corroborated," said Satara district Superintendent of Police, Sandip Patil, adding they would seek permission for his narco-analysis test.
Pol, who is being dubbed as "Dr Death", allegedly told police that he killed Jedhe, his last victim, as she knew that he had killed Chikane and Jagabai, and was aware of his other criminal activities too.
Similarly, Salma, who worked as a nurse at a hospital in Wai, knew that Pol had murdered Nathmal Bhandari.
"He told us that Chikane had a dispute with one of her relatives, and owned a lot of gold. It was Jedhe who told Pol about this dispute so that he could 'settle' it. Chikane later started taking treatment from Pol for some ailment and used to visit his clinic at Dhom in the district. Pol killed her with the intention of looting her gold," the SP said.
In the case of Jagabai, Pol had promised to help her get her land back from a person who had grabbed it fraudulently.
Again it was Jedhe who put her in touch with Pol.
SP Patil said that Pol admitted to killing Bhandari, a jeweller, out of greed for gold.
"Salma was close to Pol, and she used to go to Bhandari's house to give him physiotherapy, so she knew about this murder. Pol, who had committed four murders by then, decided to kill Salma and murdered her by administering an overdose of an anaesthetic drug," the SP said.