How a heavy bag helped railway cop detect murder of deaf-mute Kalyan man

MUMBAI: On Sunday night when Government Railway Police (GRP) constable Madhav Kendre was on patrolling duty on Platform 11, he noticed two men pulling a very heavy bag. Suspecting that something was amiss, he went up to the duo. While one of the men fled, the other avoided opening the bag despite Kendre’s insistence. When he eventually did, the constable was shocked to see what was inside: a body wrapped in polythene.
“The men were supposed to take the Tutari Express,” said Anil Kadam, senior police inspector, Dadar GRP. “But thanks to Kendre’s alertness, one of them was apprehended before that.” The constable then took the man he had nabbed to the Dadar railway police station.
A police officer said that the accused duo as well as the deceased were deaf-mutes who came together through an NGO. At the police station, the accused, identified as Jay Pravin Chavda, was questioned with the help of an interpreter. The police were told that the two men had murdered a person called Arshad Ali Sadiq Ali Shaikh, 30, a resident of Kalina, Santacruz.
According to the police, Chavda killed the deceased as he was blackmailing him with some photographs that he had of him with his girlfriend. “After the Dadar GRP found out that the murder had taken place in Gulalwadi in Pydhonie, they informed the Pydhonie police,” said a police officer. “The second accused who had escaped, identified as Shivjit Surendra Singh, was tracked down by a Pydhonie police team to Ulhasnagar and brought to the police station.”
The police said that the trio had partied on Gatari Amavasya on Sunday night. “After drinking, Chavda and Singh smashed Shaikh’s head with a hammer,” said the police officer. “They let ample blood flow in the bathroom to prevent it from flowing later and coming out of the suitcase. They then wrapped the body in a polythene sheet and packed it in the suitcase. “They were planning to dispose of the body in Konkan but the alertness of the constable spoiled their plan.”
The police have recovered the hammer used in the crime. A case has been registered against the accused under Sections 103 (murder) and 238 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence or giving false information to screen offender) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.