Updated: The accused and four co-defendants have since been acquitted of the allegations in 2023.
An Indian man has been arrested after trying to stage his own death using a cobra to kill a poor man and secure a life insurance claim worth Rs 371m (£3.6m).
The Indian Express reports Prabhakar Bhimaji Waghchaure was brought to justice when the insurance company sent an investigator on a fact finding mission about his death.
According to police, Waghchaure had been living in the US for 20 years and had moved back to the village of Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India in January this year.
Rajur Police officials were notified of the death of Waghchaure from a local government hospital in the area on 22 April.
His body was identified by a man who claimed to be his nephew and another man who claimed to be a resident of the Rajur village. Another person, identified as Rajur resident Harshad Lahamge, also identified the body as Waghchaure.
After receiving the preliminary medical report, which gave the cause of death as a snakebite, the body was handed over to the nephew for last rites to be performed.
However, officials from the insurance firm investigating Waghchaure’s life insurance claim contacted Ahmednagar authorities seeking more information on his death.
During an initial police investigation, upon a visit to Waghchaure’s house, a neighbour claimed she had not heard of any snakebite incident but had seen an ambulance arrive at the house at the time of the alleged incident.
When police contacted Lahamge, he claimed that Waghchaure had died of Covid.
As police could not trace any relative of the deceased, they looked at Waghchaure’s call records and found him alive, after which he was arrested.
Police identified the dead man as Navnath Yashwant Aanap, who had been living in the same area and had been killed by snake bite as part of the elaborate plan.