THANE: Police in Maharashtra's Thane district claimed to have cracked the murder of a Mumbai-based tailor within 48 hours of the crime with the arrest of two men, whose manner of tying the victim with a cloth before his killing provided a vital clue to the investigators.
During the probe, it came to light that the 35-year-old victim, Shamshad Ali Warish Ali, a resident of Kajupada in Mumbai's Kurla West, was murdered by the accused as the latter failed to repay Rs 3 lakh lent by Ali, the police said.
Addressing a press conference on Saturday, Thane District Superintendent of Police Vinaykumar Rathod said a missing person's complaint had previously been lodged by Ali's wife with the Sakinaka police station on May 25.
Two days later - on May 27 - the highly decomposed body of an unidentified man bearing multiple stab wounds was found in an isolated field next to an open plot within the limits of Dahagaon under the jurisdiction of the Vasind police station in Thane district, he said.
A case was then registered under sections 103(1) (murder) and 238 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against unidentified persons.
"There was no CCTV camera placed around the isolated crime scene, making it a completely blind case initially. However, a breakthrough was achieved when the victim's wife identified a pair of slippers and clothes found near the decomposed body to be Ali's," Rathod said.
Technical analysis and intelligence gathering quickly shifted the suspicion toward Syed Hassan Syed Mehbub Badshah (38), a resident of Mumbra in Thane, who was engaged as a 'zari' worker (specialising in weaving and embroidering fine metallic threads into fabrics), and his associate Sameer Abdul Karim Kalyankar (43), a resident of Mahim in Mumbai. Both were subsequently taken into custody, he added.
"Their sustained interrogation brought to light that Ali had lent Rs 3 lakh to Badshah. As the accused failed to repay the loan, the victim continuously demanded his money back. Fed up with his constant pestering, Badshah hatched a plan with Kalyankar to eliminate Ali," the official said.
Acting as per their plan, the accused duo lured the victim to the isolated location in Dahagaon in Vasind, where they tied his limbs and eyes before stabbing him to death, Rathod said.
"Considering the fact that the victim's eyes, hands, and legs were tied tightly with cloth provided a vital clue to the police that the murder was the handiwork of someone deeply accustomed to fabric and garment work, which eventually turned out to be completely true," he noted.
The crime branch carried out an investigation into the case.