Mumbai youth kills businessman to avenge affair with mum

A 16-year-old youth, who learnt about his mother being involved in an illicit relationship with a neighbour, could not digest the fact and decided to eliminate the paramour.

Along with three friends, he confronted the neighbour at Aarey Colony area post-midnight on September 21, assaulted him with a sickle, strangled him to death, and then dumped the body in a five-feet pit dug by them nearby. However, when they went into hiding, a police informant tipped the cops and they were apprehended on Friday.

Arshad Mir Aslam Khan alias Sonu, Tabrez alias Tabbu Darvesh Mohammad Khan, 21, and Parvesh Darvesh Khan, 22, reside in the Filterpada area of Aarey Colony in Goregaon (East) and work as grass cutters. The deceased, Pratap Sawant, 36, owned an ice-cream parlour in Andheri and a Chinese food stall in Malad, and was also residing in Filterpada.

Police sources say that they received a tip-off from an informant on Wednesday that three youngsters from the locality have suddenly stopped moving about in the locality, and are uncharacteristically staying home most of the time. Besides, the local police station had already learnt about Sawant being missing, and his relationship with Sonu’s mother was also well-known in the locality. 

To verify the information, a team from the Ghatkopar unit of crime branch, led by police inspectors Shrirang Nadgauda, Vinayak Vast and Anil Dhole, kept a watch on the youths on Thursday. 

After being reasonably certain that the four were involved, they were picked up by the crime branch on Friday morning. “We had reached a conclusion that they had either kidnapped or killed Sawant. We kept a watch on their movements for a day and then grilled them on Friday. They admitted their involvement in the murder,” said a crime branch official.

Explaining the sequence of events that led to the murder, the official said the quartet had information that Sawant comes home late in the evening on a motorcycle. On September 21, at around 1.30am, they confronted him in an isolated place near Aarey Colony. “On the pretext of talking to him, they took him to the rear-side of a public toilet and attacked him. When Sawant tried to resist, Sonu attacked him with a sickle on his back and legs. The fourth absconding accused, identified only as Baba, strangled him to death,” said the official.

He added that the four then dragged the body into the bushes, dug a pit, and dumped the body in it. They then covered it with soil and fled the spot.

“Investigations have revealed that many in the neighbourhood knew about the relationship and the three accused had been instigating Sonu to do something about it. As a result, Sonu had been chalking out plans to bump off Sawant since the past month-and-a-half,” said another crime branch official.