A 79-year-old Hindustani singer was attacked and robbed by two unidentified chain snatchers in Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Monday. The incident took place in Dombivli town of the district around 9 pm on Sunday, when singer Shubhada Pavgi was walking home with her son, an official said.

The accused, who were on a two-wheeler, hit the septuagenarian and decamped with her gold chain worth Rs 2 lakh, he said.Pavgi sustained minor injuries to her neck, the official said.An offence has been registered and the police were examining the CCTV footage from the scene to identify the accused, he added.

In an another case in Thane, a woman and her neighbour were arrested for allegedly eloping after stealing gold and cash cumulatively worth Rs 15.46 lakh in 2017, a Thane police official said on Sunday.The probe began after a woman filed a complaint on December 25, 2017 that her daughter-in-law had run away with their neighbour after taking away 55 tolas of gold and cash from the house, Property Cell senior inspector Anand Ravrane said."The accused managed to change their names, get PAN and Aadhaar cards in the new names and evaded police by moving from Gokarna in Karnataka to Goa to Chiplun and other areas of Maharashtra's Konkan belt," he said.The two were held recently on a tip off, he added. 

Meanwhile, nine months after a 75-year-old woman was found dead in her house in Maharashtra's Thane district, the police have registered a case of murder and destruction of evidence against her landlord, the latter's wife and son, an official said on Sunday.

The deceased, Waheedabi Noor Mohammad Shaikh, was a widow and lived alone in the house in Kalyan town since 1990.

Her landlord had been forcing her to vacate the house as he wanted to develop the property. The woman, however, had refused to vacate the house, the official from Bazarpeth police station said quoting a complaint filed by a relative of the deceased.

The complainant also claimed the victim, who was his aunt, had on several occasions complained to him about the landlord troubling her, the official said.

The complainant visited the aunt's house on May 13, 2022 and she was fine. However, after a few days he received a message that she died in the house on May 16.

When he went there, the complainant found the body had turned black and there were blood stains around. Following his request, the police sent the body for postmortem, the official said.

After the woman's death, the landlord took away the house keys from the complainant.

As the complainant suspected foul play in his aunt's death, he approached a court which in January this year directed the police to register an offence against the landlord and his two family members and initiate a probe into the case.

The Bazarpeth police on Saturday registered a case against the three persons under Indian Penal Code Sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention), the official said, adding no arrest has been made so far.

The FIR also said that the police, after registering a case of accidental death in May last year, have been carrying out an independent probe into the woman's death.