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The man went to visit his ailing daughter in UP and forgot about his wife who he had locked up with just a few days' food supplies.A woman in this teeming metropolis starved to death after her husband left her locked in her Nalla Sopara flat for a month while he went away to Uttar Pradesh to look up an ailing daughter. The man who returned on Monday - after losing his daughter too, to epilepsy - was arrested and remanded to police custody for three days.On June 13, 50-year-old Rameshchandra Rai locked up his wife Kiran, 45, in their home in Anand Bhavan Apartments in Nalla Sopara (East) before leaving for Azamgarh to visit his daughter.He intended to return a week later, and had stocked enough rations in the house for that period, said police inspector Mukund Mahajan. But tragically, Rai’s daughter died and he prolonged his stay in UP.Kiran, in the meantime, emptied her supplies and after that subsisted only on water till she passed away. She was found dead on July 21 after neighbours informed police about a foul smell emanating from her flat.The police broke open the locks and the main grill to the house and were shocked to find Kiran dead, her near-naked body completely maggot-ridden. The post-mortem report, done four days ago, clearly revealed that the victim died of severe starvation, said Mahajan.“The body was swollen because of the excess water Kiran had consumed, and was so decomposed that we could not even keep it in cold storage in the mortuary and had to bury it,” he said. There were no food supplies in the house.Intriguingly, even the windows of the flat were fastened from the outside, and police are wondering why Kiran never banged on them or called out for help. They registered a case of accidental death.From his worker’spolicy card, the police found out that Rai had been employed at Wibs Bakery-,Gokhale Road,Dadar.The bakery manager informed the police that Rai had left his job a few days ago, and he gave them Rai’s mobile number. PI Mahajan’s team then called up Rai at his native village in Paschim patti, Airwala taluka, Azamgarh,UP.Rai had no clue that his wife had died. He arrived from UP on Monday and identified Kiran’s body from her belongings, said Mahajan. Rai’s arrest was under section 304 (culpable homicide) of the IPC, and he was produced before the Vasai court for his police remand on Tuesday.Rai claimed he locked up his wife as she was not mentally stable and used to behave strangely in public. For this reason, the couple never interacted with the neighbours, he said.“But we are not believing him, and will come to know the truth after our investigations,” said Mahajan.