Man breaks into house in Chandrapur, abuses woman, flees with phone and cash

A shocking incident has come to light in Avhalpur in Korpana taluka of Chandrapur district, where a man took advantage of no one being home, barged into a house, hurled obscene abuse at a woman and fled with her mobile phone and cash. The matter is linked to an old family dispute. Based on the victim's complaint, a case has been registered at Gadchandur police station against the accused, Prakash Vaman Durge, a resident of Taloadhi in Korpana taluka.

According to police, the 33-year-old woman, originally from Taloadhi, lives in a rented room near a dairy in Avhalpur with her husband and their five-year-old son. Her husband works on contract at the UltraTech Cement company. The accused Prakash Durge and the complainant's family have had a long-running dispute over family matters for the past 12-13 years, and the two families do not get along at all. On Tuesday, 8 September, around 8 am, the woman's husband left for work. Around 10 am, the woman was in the yard behind the house with her son, burning garbage she had swept up, when she heard a suspicious sound of someone entering the house. She went in immediately and found the accused, Prakash Durge, standing inside the house.

When the woman asked why he had suddenly entered the house, the accused instead accused her of talking to various people and began abusing her in extremely foul language. The frightened woman tried to pick up her sky-blue Vivo mobile phone kept on a cupboard to call her husband, but could not find it. She then saw that her phone was in the accused's pocket and asked for it back, but he fled the spot rapidly without returning it.

The frightened woman then checked the purse hanging on the kitchen wall to call her husband, and found that the entire Rs 10,000 in cash kept in it was also missing. She immediately went to a neighbour's house and, using her phone, told her husband the entire incident. The husband called the accused, Prakash Durge, and asked him to return the stolen money and phone, but the accused flatly denied stealing anything and said in a threatening tone, "I did not take the phone, do whatever you want to do."

With goods worth a total of Rs 23,000 (a phone worth Rs 13,000 and Rs 10,000 in cash) stolen from the house, the victim eventually went to Gadchandur police station with her husband and reported the incident. Under the guidance of the station in-charge and the police inspector, police have registered a case against the accused, Prakash Vaman Durge, under Sections 305(a) (house-breaking theft) and 352 (abuse and insult with intent to breach the peace) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023. The case is being further investigated by police constable Vijaykumar Munde.