ACP Madhusudhan Kurne Son Abhijit, Wife Ashwini Shot Dead

When Assistant Commissioner of Police Madhusudhan Kurne sat down for dinner with his family on Thursday, it was the culmination of a normal weekday. The men were back from office, the women back from shopping, and there was nothing sinister lingering in the air. Little did he know that by then, his eldest son Abhijit had decided to end his own life, and that of Ashwini, his wife of six months.
    Abhijit, 27, and Ashwini, 21, were found dead on Friday morning, lying on blood-stained sheets in their bedroom, each shot once in the temple at point-blank range. Their bodies were discovered by their parents and Abhijit's brother Amar, who all lived in the same two-bedroom flat at Royal Apartments in Malad but had slept through the gun-shots on Thursday night. The murder weapon, Madhusudhan's .38 bore service revolver, was on the bed beside them.
    Police have taken fingerprints of both the deceased to ascertain what really happened, but prima facie a case of murder has been registered against Abhijit for first shooting Ashwini while she was sleeping, and then turning the gun on himself.
    "The revolver had been removed from his father's cupboard last evening after Abhijit took the key from his mother saying he wanted to keep some important papers there. He took only two bullets," Investigating Officer API Gajendra Suryavanshi told Mumbai Mirror. "The girl and boy were both shot on the left side of their foreheads. The bullet that killed Ashwini was recovered from the pillow on which she was sleeping, and the one that killed Abhijit on the floor after ricocheting off a wooden cupboard."
THEY OFTEN FOUGHT
Abhijit and Ashwini had been together since February when a match was arranged between the successful touroperator boy and the Kolhapur girl, who was also a cousin. To everyone outside the house, including friends and extended family, they were happily enjoying each other's company.
    But police sources say initial investigations have revealed that fights would often break out between husband and wife. Abhijit suspected that Ashwini was having an affair, which she denied and accused him in return of being unnecessarily mistrusting. Just last week, after one such fight, Ashwini's parents had come down from Kolhapur to broker peace between their daughter and son-in-law.
    On Thursday, a day when Ashwini spent the afternoon shopping for the Ganpati festival with her mother-inlaw, Abhijit returned home at 8:30 pm complaining that her mobile phone had been busy all evening. Ashwini denied this, and Abhijit seemingly calmed down after she let him check her phone.
    It was sometime during the fight, however, that he resolved to take the extreme step. A few minutes before dinner, he asked his mother for the key to his father's cupboard and quietly retrieved his service revolver, which he hid in his own room.
    The couple were last seen around 11:30 pm, when the family retired for the night.
DIDN'T HEAR THE SHOTS
When Madhusudhan, his wife, and son Amar woke up the next morning, they were surprised to find that Ashwini, always an early riser, wasn't in the kitchen as usual. They knocked on their bedroom door repeatedly, asking if everything was fine, but no one answered.
    Finally, after trying to get their
attention for a while, Amar looked into the room through a keyhole, and saw the bodies covered in blood. When the door was broken open, Abhijit, in a vest and track pants, was lying slumped on his side of the bed, and Ashwini, in a sari, was lying on her side, almost as if she was still asleep.
    "No one had heard the shots possibly because the bedroom had a thick double door, and because the shots must've been muffled as they were fired at point-blank range," Inspector Deepak Pathangde of the Malad police station said. "Also, the AC in the room was very loud, and there was Govinda music on until late night," added another officer.
    There was a gloomy commotion in the Kurne household all day. Wearing black glasses due to a cataract operation earlier this week, ACP Madhusudhan was crying his eyes out. "Where are you, my son," he wailed as the bodies were wheeled out in the evening.
    A post-mortem is being conducted at JJ Hospital, with a report expecteda on Saturday morning.