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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...

Man kills one-year-old son, said he wanted a daughter

In a shocking incident, a man killed his one-year-old son at Wakodi village near Khapa because he wished to have a daughter. The accused father is now cooling heels behind the bars at Khapa police station.
The accused was identified as Bhajan Metab Kawreti (40), a resident of Wakodi village. According to police, Bajan married Mathura (32) in 2016. Bhajan and Mathura are daily wage workers. They had their first child in 2017 while their second child last year. After the birth of first baby boy, Bhajan was expecting a daughter. But he became father of one more son last year. Since then, he used to tell his wife Mathura that he was expecting a daughter. This was the point of friction between the couple many times.
On Tuesday night, he asked Mathura for money to consume liquor but she refused him. He got angered and picked a quarrel with her. In a fit of rage, he picked his one-year-old son Satyam and smashed him on the ground in the courtyard. The boy sustained grievous head injuries. Blood was oozing from his head and he died at home before getting medical treatment. Bhajan kept the body in the house. Khapa police got the information about the murder from Police Patil of the village. The police, led by Police Inspector Ajay Mankar, rushed to the spot and arrested the man. The body was sent for the post-mortem.
He was booked under Section 302 of Indian Penal Code. “The accused would be produced in the court on Thursday,” said PI Mankar.


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