PUNE: A scrap dealer and his son have been arrested in connection with the murder of a 27-year-old private moneylender from Chikhli, who went missing on September 27 last year.
The deceased, identified as Shriram Shivaji Walekar, was found murdered and buried at a plot rented by the suspects in Chikhli on Friday.
The arrested father-son duo, Samidullah Maniyar (54) and Mehboob Maniyar (26) from Kudalkwadi, have confessed that their modus to dispose of the victim’s body was inspired by Bollywood crime thriller ‘Drishyam’. Just as it happened in the film, the duo tried to destroy all evidence involving the crime to make it seem as if nothing happened, police said.
However, the duo, who believed that they would never be caught, soon ran out of luck and landed in police net.
Devendra Chavan, assistant inspector of the Nigdi police, said the suspects had hatched the plot to eliminate Walekar as he was pursuing them for the money they had borrowed.
“The father-son duo rented an empty plot near their godown. After slitting Walekar’s throat inside their scrap godown on September 27 last year, the suspects then covered his body in a plastic sheet and buried it in the rented plot,” Chavan said, adding that the highly decomposed body of Walekar was exhumed on Friday.
Chavan said Walekar’s father had lodged a missing person’s complaint with the Nigdi police station on September 28 last year. In the complaint, he had stated that his son had gone missing on the morning of September 27.
“While investigating the case, police came to know that Walekar was a private moneylender. We then began collecting information about the people who had borrowed money from him,” the officer said.
Chavan said the investigation revealed that Samidullah had borrowed money from Walekar on many occasions. “Meanwhile, constable Kiran Khedkar also received a tip-off that Samidullah and Walker also had a dispute regarding the money they had borrowed from Walekar,” he said.
When police checked the call details of Walekar and Samidullah, they found that both of them were in contact with each other in the Kudalwadi area in September last year.
“They had made several calls to each other during that period. When a police team went looking for Samidullah, it was revealed that he had gone to his native place with his son,” Chavan said.
The officer said when Mehboob returned to Kudalwadi on Thursday, the police team immediately took him into custody.
Leave a Reply