Woman set ablaze in Aurangabad dies

A 50-year-old Dalit woman who was set ablaze and burnt inside her home around midnight of Tuesday, succumbed to her injuries at a hospital in Ghati in Aurangabad on Thursday, police said.

She had been rushed to the hospital early on Wednesday with 95 per cent burns and was fighting for her life, said an official of Aurangabad Police Control.

Following her death, her village Andhari, sub-district Sillod and parts of the district have announced a shutdown and a procession is planned later in the day.

According to the police, the victim was living alone at her home and around 11 p.m. on Tuesday, when the accused Santosh Mohite, a beer bar owner, forcibly barged into her home.

When she protested at this infringement of her privacy, the enraged Mohite abused her, assaulted her and then took a can of kerosene lying in the home, doused her, set her ablaze before running out of her home after locking the door from outside.

Hearing her screams and seeing the smoke emanating from her home some neighbours rushed there to help her and even summoned the local police.

"The victim managed to record her statement with police. We have arrested the accused and booked him for various offences including murder attempt and are trying to ascertain the real motives behind the crime," Aurangabad Police Control official Babashah B. Pathan told IANS.

This was the second incident in Maharashtra of the kind in barely 36 hours after the public burning of a 25-year-old woman lecturer Ankita Pissude on Monday morning, by her spurned suitor Vikesh alias Vicki Nagrale, in Hinganghat town in Wardha, on a square outside her college.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and the police have ordered the most stringent charges against the two arrested accused in both the cases which also reverberated in Lok Sabha twice.