A horrifying tragedy has unfolded in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, where an Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF), Shailesh Khambhla, stands accused of murdering his own wife and two children and burying their bodies just outside his forest department quarters.
The brutality of the alleged crime has left the community shaken, raising heartbreaking questions about how a man could commit such an unthinkable act against his own family.
According to Bhavnagar SP Nitesh Pandey, Khambhla confessed to smothering his wife, Nayana (42), their nine-year-old son, and 13-year-old daughter on November 5.
He reportedly covered their faces with a pillow, added heavy stones on their bodies, and then buried them in six-foot-deep pits filled with water.
To conceal his crime, he placed a door and a blanket over the bodies before filling up the pits with sand.
What makes this case particularly horrifying is the calculated nature of the act: Khambhla allegedly arranged for two pits to be dug in advance under the pretext of clearing debris.
Call detail records suggest that he coordinated with a junior officer, Girish Vania, to do this.
The motive, police say, may lie in a marital dispute. According to investigators, Nayana had been pressing for the family to live together in Bhavnagar, but Khambhla resisted the idea.
Their disagreements—once dismissed as domestic quarrels—allegedly escalated into chilling premeditation.
The case came to light when Khambhla himself filed a missing persons report on November 7, claiming his family had vanished while he was on official duty.
But neighbors and surveillance contradicted his version. Alarmed by suspicious digging near his quarters, the police searched on November 16, with forensic teams and an executive magistrate present.
That’s when the horrifying discovery was made: the bodies of Nayana and her children, buried just a few steps from where they lived.
Khambhla, 39, has now been arrested and faces charges including murder, destruction of evidence, and providing false statements to a public servant.
The full post-mortem and digital forensic analysis are underway to piece together the timeline and motive.
From the outside, he appeared to be a dedicated forest officer. But the inside of his home, the very space where trust should have meant safety, became a grave.
For the family, the quarrels that may have once seemed “normal” turned into something far more sinister—and the cost was their lives.
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