How Mumbai police struggled and finally cracked Esther murder case

In order to solve any complex case, the police rely heavily on technical intelligence. But this intelligence proved to be of no help for the police while probing the murder of techie Esther Anuhya two years ago. All that police were armed with was a CCTV grab of the 23-year-old with a man at the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) in Kurla.

Constituting nine teams tasked with different works, questioning of over 2,500 people and scrutiny of 36 CCTV footages at LTT – all these efforts finally led the police to 29-year-old Chandrabhan Sanap alias Chowkya, the man who brutally raped and murdered Esther.

"The main reason for us to suspect the involvement of taxi or auto drivers in the case was that Esther's body was found in a pit near Bhandupeshwar Kund in Bhandup (E) on January 16. No bus plies near that area early in the morning. Only a cab or a taxi driver could have taken her to the spot from LTT," said a crime branch officer, who was part of the investigating team.

He added that ever since the body was found, the police have recorded statements of over a 1,000 people, including the passengers who travelled with Esther from Hyderabad to Mumbai, auto and taxi drivers, and coolies and vendors near LTT.

"We also went through the call records of over 800 people but they could not be located in Bhandupeshwar Kund area or any location from LTT to the crime spot. That was mainly because there was no call or message traffic between 5am and 7am in the morning. In this case, if the killer had taken Esther from LTT, murdered her at Bhandupeshwar Kund and returned to LTT, the phone would still have shown his location at Kurla or wherever he received his first call or text message of the day," the officer explained.

According to the police, the CCTV clips recorded at the Kurla terminus on January 5 showed Esther leaving with an unknown man. "The efforts of a special team led us to the accused, Sanap, a Kanjurmarg resident with a criminal record. Sanap has around eight cases of bag-lifting and stealing registered at Gamdevi, Nashik, Manmad and Itarsi police stations. The police zeroed in on him after comparing his photos from police records with the face on the CCTV," the officer said.

On January 5, a drunk Sanap came to the terminus at 4.15am to rob passengers. He posed as a driver and told Esther, who was waiting at the platform, that he would drop her home for Rs300. He told her they would go on his motorcycle, which actually belonged to his friend Nandkishore Sahu. When Esther expressed her reservation, Sanap asked her to note down his bike and mobile phone numbers and give them to her relatives.

"Esther had no balance left in her phone, so she pretended to call her relatives," an officer said. Sanap took her to Tilak Nagar, Sahakar cinema, EE Highway and then to a service road in Kanjurmarg. After claiming that he had run out of fuel, he allegedly took her into the bushes and tried to rape her.

When Esther resisted, he banged her head thrice on the ground and strangled her with her dupatta. He also allegedly set her on fire with the help of petrol from his bike, but the flames didn't catch on properly. He then fled with her bags. Later, he told his friend Sahu about the crime.

Afraid that Esther might have given his number to a relative, Sanap returned to the spot for her cell phone but couldn't find it. The phone was later recovered by the police. By then, Sanap had fled to Nashik," said the officer.

In the first week of March, 2014, after being traced in Kanjurmarg, Sanap was taken to Nashik. "He had given Esther's bag to a beggar, saying his wife had died and he was disposing of her belongings. The bag was later seized by the police. We also recovered Esther's clothes and spectacles from Sanap's sister's residence in Kanjurmarg," the officer added.