Wipro, NRI, Divorce : Makes for a headline?

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Wipro won’t sack NRI for torturing wife
Washington-based Wipro employee Yogesh Patil who has been arrested on charges of abetting his wife’s suicide will continue to be treated as a Wipro employee till the charges against him are proven.

When contacted executive vice president (human resources), Wipro, Pratik Kumar told Mumbai Mirror that the company’s policy in such cases is that the employee’s services are terminated only upon his being proven guilty. “We will have to wait till the judgment in this case is delivered before we decide whether or not to take action against him.”

Since Patil has been arrested by the police and remanded to magisterial custody till August 28, his salary will be deducted for the number of days he fails to report to duty. “He will be treated like any other employee who is absent from work. His leaves will be adjusted against the number of days he is absent from work. If his absence continues beyond the leaves he has accumulated he will suffer loss of pay for that period,” Kumar explained.

Kumar said he was not sure about Patil’s job profile in Washington. “He was deputed overseas to work in the technical stream. He was one of our 5,000 employees there. That’s all the information I have about his job.”

Mumbai Mirror had on August 15 reported how the Vasai police arrested former Ruparel topper and Wipro employee Yogesh after he mysteriously arrived in the city carrying his wife’s dead body and cremated her without informing her family.

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Details from Mumbai Mirror Bureau:

NRI tortured wife, drove her to suicide

Vasai police arrest former Ruparel topper and Washington-based Wipro employee after he mysteriously lands up carrying his wife’s dead body and cremates her without informing her family

* Inadvertently the turn for our front page story on Tuesday (NRI tortured wife inspired by Nana film) was jumbled up with another story. We apologise for the same and reproduce the story in its entirety here:

He had all the attributes that a parent might look for in a groom for their daughterWashington-based non-resident Indian Yogesh Patil (30) was a topper from Ruparel College, he had a cushy job with Wipro and he promised to keep his bride happy.

But three years after school teacher Manohar Pandit had married his brilliant daughter Sheetal, an M.Sc in Computers, to Patil, her dead body was brought to Vasai, cremated without his knowledge and last week his son-in-law was arrested by Vasai police for torture and dowry.

After his arrest Patil confessed to torturing his wife which led to her suicide. The sordid story unfolded when Patil arrived from the US with no prior intimation at his parents’ house at Vasai on August 11. Accompanying him was his wife’s dead body. Suspecting something amiss one of the neighbours who did not wish to be identified informed Sheetal’s parents about her death. But by the time her father Manohar who teaches at Chalisgaon, Jalgaon reached Vasai, Sheetal had already been cremated and he was told that she had killed herself.

Yogesh, a topper in XIIth Science examination from Ruparel College, Matunga, with a B.E (Mechanical), had worked in the Pune and Hyderabad offices of Wipro Limited before being transferred to Washington. For Pandit, he seemed like an ideal match for his bright and beautiful daughter. Accordingly the match was arranged. Vasai police say that Yogesh’s father Suresh Patil who himself is a principal at New Era English School, Nallasopara, demanded and got Rs 4.57 lakh in dowry. However not satisfied with that he then asked for another Rs 50,000 soon after the marriage on April 17,2003.

Hiding the fact from Sheetal who was dead against any kind of dowry, her parents scrounged the money together and paid most of the dowry demanded. After the wedding, Yogesh left for the United States and Sheetal joined him on 1 August 2004. Police say that during her short stay with Yogesh’s parents, Sheetal was physically and mentally abused. “Her mother-in-law Sulochana used to taunt Sheetal on trivial issues like cooking and filling water. Sheetal, apparently did not inform her parents about this,” says police inspector R Lokhare.

TORTURE IN US

In the US too, Sheetal was subjected to daily abuse by Yogesh. “When she was pregnant, Sulochna told her son to abort the babies as she thought Sheetal may deliver two girls after the sonography report confirmed twins. But, Sheetal refused to undergo abortion as she was already six months pregnant and abortion at that stage would be risky,” the officer said. In June 2005, Sheetal delivered twin boys in the US.

But her torture did not stop. She was not allowed to speak to her parents on the telephone or write letters to them. Three months ago, Sheetal finally managed to sneak out a letter to her father. She told him that her husband was ‘inspired’ by the Hindi film ‘ Agnisakshi’ where the hero, Nana Patekar tortured the heroine, Manisha Koirala. “He enacted the torture scenes in the movie and told me ‘I am spending on you, you have to obey what I tell you.” She also wrote about committing suicide.

Apart from that letter to her father Sheetal had told a Pune based friend, Sapna Mukherjee (name changed), during internet chats on May and June about the torture and that she was planning to file for divorce.

The police have recovered Sheetal’s laptop and plan to get transcripts of the conversation from the Internet Service Provider. “This would reveal more details about the torture,” said Lohkare.

Yogesh has told the police that there was a bitter fight between the couple on August 3. “Yogesh had repeatedly punched Sheetal’s face and in self defence, she bit Yogesh’s arms and fingers,” police said.

The next day she hanged herself. Police have now recovered the “stridhan” (items gifted to a woman by her parents during the marriage) and other materials from the Patils. Cops say Sheetal used to maintain a daily diary which Yogesh tried to destroy after her death. However, some torn pages of the diary where Sheetal had described the daily torture has been recovered by the police.

“We have accused the three under section 304 (b) for dowry death, 498 for harassment for dowry, 306 for provoking suicide, among other charges,” said Lohkare.

If convicted, the trio could face a minimum jail sentence of seven to ten years and currently the three accused have been remanded to police custody till 15 August. Sheetal’s uncle, Purshottam Gawande, a senior inspector posted at Vidhan Sabha has demanded severe punishment to the three for murdering her niece. The twins are now with Sheetal’s relatives in Chalisgaon.
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UPDATE IN THE STORY:

Yogesh Patil, told the police that he drew an annual salary Rs 20 lakh. Hence there was no need for him to demand dowry. “Pandit is trying to frame me,” said Patil.

He said if Sheetal had written four letters to Pandit complaining of harassment why didn’t he file a complaint earlier.

The police said Patil, in one of his statements, had said he spent 16-18 hours a day at work and could not give much to his wife. In another statement he said he used to have frequent fights with his wife.

The Vasai police may visit the apartment in Washington where Sheetal committed suicide. Senior Police Inspector Purshottam Gawande said, “We are yet to receive the post-mortem report from Washington. Only an accidental death report has been registered there. So another post-mortem was conducted at Cooper hospital.” The police would visit Yahoo office in Lower Parel to probe about the chat sessions that Sheetal had with a Pune-based friend.

Patil and his parents have been remanded to magisterial custody till August 28.