A 34-year-old woman, Payal Zambre Patil, was found hanging in a flat in Pune’s Mukund Nagar area on Monday, police said, and her husband has been arrested after her maternal relatives accused him and his parents of harassing her over demands for gold. Police have registered a case of alleged abetment of suicide, while Payal’s relatives have alleged that she was murdered and her body was hanged in the apartment near her matrimonial home.
Payal, a former IT professional who later quit her job, was married to Akshay Zambre Patil, and the couple had a daughter. According to police, Payal quarreled with her mother-in-law on Sunday and left home. Her in-laws and relatives began searching for her on Monday morning and found her hanging in a room of a flat in an apartment complex near their residence. No suicide note was found, a Swargate police station officer said.
Payal’s brother, Rishikesh Pawar, alleged that her husband and in-laws appeared “unbothered” when he arrived at their home on Monday. He claimed that when questioned, they got up to search for Payal and returned within five minutes to say she was in a nearby apartment. “When we reached the flat, its door was locked from inside. I somehow managed to enter through the rear balcony and found Payal hanging,” he said. He added that Payal had often complained of harassment by her mother-in-law.
Payal’s uncle alleged that she was killed and that her husband and in-laws hanged her body in the apartment. He claimed that since her marriage, Payal had been harassed by her mother-in-law and that every Diwali the family was asked to fulfil a demand for ten tolas of gold. “This year too, they demanded gold, but we told them that we were farmers and, given the drought-like situation, it was not possible for us to meet the demand. We had even promised to give the gold next year,” he said.
The police complaint states that when Payal was pregnant in 2022, her husband and in-laws pressured her to give birth to a boy and subjected her to mental harassment. After she gave birth to a girl on March 30, 2023, her in-laws allegedly visited the hospital, argued with her and said they would not take responsibility for either her or the child. Following her death, relatives of the deceased allegedly ransacked her in-laws’ house.
Senior Inspector Yashwant Nikam of Swargate police station told PTI that an offence has been registered against Payal’s mother-in-law, father-in-law and husband for alleged abetment of suicide. “Akshay has been arrested. Two police teams have been formed to trace the other accused,” he said. Police said statements of Payal’s maternal relatives are being recorded.
Original Source: https://www.ndtv.com/pune-news/34-year-old-pune-woman-found-hanging-husband-arrested-family-alleges-murder-12273579#publisher=newsstand
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Publish Date: 2026-11-03 01:03:00
