Pune man strangled to death by friends, body dumped in Beed; 2 arrested

PUNE: Two men allegedly strangled their 23-year-old friend to death in Pune and later dumped his body in a hilly area in Maharashtra’s Beed district, police said on Sunday. The accused, both friends of the deceased, have been arrested. The motive behind the killing is yet to be ascertained, police said.The deceased was identified as Abhishek Namdev Karkambe, a resident of Shikrapur in Pune district.According to police, the two accused visited Karkambe’s house and took him along on the pretext of going out. They allegedly strangled him to death before transporting his body in a four-wheeler to Ashti tehsil in Beed district, around 200 km from Pune.The accused allegedly dumped the body in dense shrubs along Kanifnath Ghat on the Beed-Ahilyanagar state highway and fled, a police official said.When Karkambe failed to return home, his father questioned his friends. However, they allegedly gave evasive and misleading replies, police said.On Friday morning, Ambhora police received information about an unidentified body lying in the Kanifnath Ghat area. A police team reached the spot and recovered the body.The body was kept at the Kada Primary Health Centre, while police circulated photographs on social media to establish the deceased’s identity.After the body was identified as Karkambe, his father lodged a complaint with the police on Saturday. Following the complaint, police arrested the two accused and registered an FIR against them.Police are now investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing and trying to establish the motive behind the crime, the official said.