Keen observation skills are a crucial tool for police officers, especially while solving challenging cases. In one such case in Mumbai’s western suburbs in 2012, it was a sharp-eyed police officer who noticed a nervous gesture made by a man brought in for questioning—an observation that ultimately unravelled the mystery behind a skeleton discovered in Malwani Creek.
It was in April 2012 that the Malwani police received information from their informer about somebody being murdered in the area towards Malwani Creek. The police launched a search and soon found a human skeleton in the creek area. At the time, however, the police could not determine if the person had died accidentally or if it was a homicide.
With the help of doctors and experts, the police, prima facie, learnt that the deceased was a youngster. Pursuing this lead, the police started making enquiries at local police stations to check if any family had reported a youngster missing. However, the task did not yield any results.
Malwani police teams then started visiting houses in the area, along with photos of the clothes found on the skeleton. This led the police to a few youngsters who identified the clothes and told them that they might have belonged to their friend, Kamlesh Yadav, 21. They showed Yadav’s house to the police.
When the police enquired where Yadav was, his family said he had gone to their native village in Uttar Pradesh around two months ago. Suspecting something amiss, the police took the family to the hospital and showed them the skeleton and the clothes found on it. The family members were shocked as they confirmed that the clothes belonged to Yadav.
The police intensified their investigation. Asked if they had enmity with anyone, the family told the police that they stayed as a joint family. However, Yadav and his father had a property dispute with Yadav’s cousins Virendra, Ram Badan and their father, the police said.
The police were confident that they had cracked the case and detained Virendra and Ram Badan and interrogated them. However, soon they realised that though the family had a property dispute, it was not the reason behind Yadav’s disappearance. The police let the two go home.
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The investigation was stuck, and the police had no concrete leads to move forward.
One of the police officers in the probe team visited Yadav’s family again and spoke to them at length, asking if anything unusual had happened during the last few days before he went out and did not return. It was then that one of the family members told the officer that a day before Yadav was scheduled to travel to their village, he had lost his gold ring and was very worried about it.
This morsel of information caught the officer’s attention as he had seen Yadav’s cousin, Virendra, trying to loosen his ring during the interrogation, as if it was not fitting his finger. The officer enquired with Virendra’s friends and relatives if he regularly wore a gold ring and learnt that he did not own one.
The officer informed his seniors, and Virendra was detained again and placed under sustained interrogation, following which he allegedly admitted to having killed Yadav. It was Virendra who had misguided Yadav’s family, saying he had reached the village, the police said.
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According to the police, Virendra told them that around a year ago, he got married in his village and brought his wife to Mumbai. The family arranged a small house next to theirs for the newlywed couple. After a few months of marriage, Virendra’s friends allegedly told him that Yadav was having an affair with his wife.
An angry Virendra started keeping an eye on his wife after leaving home under the pretext of going to work, police sources said, adding that one day, he spotted Yadav in a compromising position with his wife. That was when he allegedly decided to murder Yadav.
According to the police, Virendra roped in his brother Ram Badan and two friends. They planned to take Yadav to a deserted place. So, when they saw he was worried and looking for his lost gold ring, Virendra approached him and said that he had seen his ring with a person, Barkat, in the Ambujwadi area. Curious how this person stole his ring, Yadav allegedly asked Virendra to show him Barkat’s place.
Virendra took Yadav on a two-wheeler towards the bushy field near Malwani Creek where Ram Badan and two of Virendra’s friends were lying in wait, the police said. The four then allegedly stabbed Yadav, smashed his face with a stone, and dumped his body in the creek.
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When the police asked where Barkat lives, Virendra allegedly revealed that no such person existed and it was he who had stolen Yadav’s gold ring as part of his plan to trick him into coming with him to a deserted place.
All the accused were arrested in the case.
