‘My son will come back’

Fifty-two-year-old Kunjbihari Agarwal is still waiting for his son Raj, who was kidnapped from near his Wadala residence in 2003, to return home. Despite the police’s claim that they found the 14-year-old boy’s skeleton and a court corroborating the evidence, Kunjbihari’s conviction is unwavering.

On Friday, seven persons were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Sewree fast-track court in connection with Raj’s kidnap and murder. 
Reacting to this, Kunjbihari, a local moneylender, said, “My son is alive and he will come to us one day. I will now consult my lawyers.”
Kunjbihari and his wife Aarti, 47, have refused to identify the skeleton, the school bag and other articles recovered by the Crime Branch on April 6, 2004, from the banks of Bhima river in Daund, a village near Pune. They have still not claimed the ‘body’.

However, ad hoc additional sessions judge GW Awasarmol held that the body found by the police was related to the Agarwal family.
The accused sentenced to life are Sayyed Aslam Jaffar, Sayyed Akhtar Jaffar, Sachin Bhunkar, Nadeem Shaikh, Sunil, alias Karan Walmiki, Surendra Kadam, and Govind Shinde. However, the court acquitted three others observing that there was no evidence to prove their involvement.

Special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam examined 27 witnesses in the case. “We have established the case based on circumstantial evidence.”

The prosecution claimed that Raj was allegedly taken to Daund in Kadam’s car and he was kept for 10 days at Shinde’s house after he was kidnapped on November 18, 2003. He was later strangled to death.

Kunjbihari told the court that he had received a call from an Abu Dhabi number from an unknown person who demanded a ransom of Rs5 crore.

He said that one assistant sub-inspector Sanjeevan Kamble from Kala Chowkie police station volunteered to act as a mediator. Kunjbihari claimed that that he gave Rs5 lakh to Kamble to give to the kidnappers.

When his son still didn’t return, Kunjbihari approached the Bombay High Court (HC). On April 4, 2004, the HC ordered an inquiry by the Crime Branch.

The police arrested the accused two days later after they allegedly kidnapped another boy from Hyderabad and took him to Daund.

Tests confirm relation to Agarwals: Expert
Shekhar Devendra, a spot witness, said that Shaikh led the police to the place from where the boy’s skeleton was recovered.
Nikam examined Devinder Singh Negi from DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, who conducted two DNA tests on the body. Though the first one was negative, the second one confirmed that the source of the bones is “biologically related to Kunjbihari Agarwal”.

In an analysis of the two tests, Dr Harish Pathak, then an assistant in forensic medicine and toxicology from LT Municipal Hospital, said the body is “most probably” that of Raj’s. Pathak also conducted a digital superimposition photography examination with the help of Raj’s photograph. His report stated that skull could belong to the person depicted in the photograph.