Complainant recounts horrific scene of elderly's frantic plight

Twenty-eight-year-old Andheri resident had just pulled his car outside his 10-storey building, Samarth Aangan, in Lokhandwala at 11.15pm on Saturday. While parking his car, he heard a loud thud above, he instantly looked up. What he saw shocked him.

“I saw a senior citizen in the first-floor flat crying for help, frantically beating the glass window. The flat’s windows were bare of curtains as the rod was broken,” said the alert neighbour, an eyewitness and a complainant in the case.

Arun Tikku, 65, owned three flats 101, 102, 103, in the building. Tikku lived in Delhi and his son lived in the flat.

The posh society in the tony locality has one resident in one floor.

The man immediately called the building’s security guard and they both went to Tikku’s flat and knocked on the door. A man opened it.

But when he saw the security guard, he tried to drag him inside. The complainant pushed the door open and entered the house.

“I saw someone lying on the bed, covered with a sheet. When I told the man who had opened the door that someone was crying for help from the bedroom window, he said that it was the same man on the bed and that he had suffered a fit,” said the eyewitness.

The man also told him that they were tenants in the flat and paid Rs30,000 rent every month. “But I saw blood stains on the leg of the man who was lying on the bed. I smelled something fishy and immediately called up the Mumbai police control,” he said.

He told the watchmen to stay in the flat until the police arrived. “The man then shut the door. Around half-an-hour later, the police came. Even after they knocked on the door several times, there was no response,” he added.

The police had to break open the door but found no one inside.

They searched the house and found Tikku’s body, naked below the waist, in the bathroom.
“The two people might have escaped from the bathroom window,” said the complainant.