MUMBAI: Five men, three of them shooters from Madhya Pradesh, were arrested within a day of a Dahisar jeweller being shot dead inside his store.
Police said the conspiracy was hatched in MP, where the mastermind lives, and is yet to be arrested. While the accused claimed their motive was only to loot the store, police will probe if the murder was a result of a personal feud.
Shailendra Pandey (37) had been shot within 10 minutes of entering his shop, Om Sai Raj Jewellers, on Wednesday. Three masked men were captured on camera fleeing on a scooter. On suspicion that the scooter was stolen, police started to go through complaints of theft. They found CCTV grabs of a scooter theft where the thief was wearing white shoes. One of the masked assailants at the Dahisar store had been wearing the same shoes. Investigators scoured through surveillance videos till they located images of a car from which the scooter thief stepped out. The car belonged to Dahisar resident Chirag Rawal.
Rawal said he knew nothing about the crime. “But we checked his social media accounts and found profiles of the masked assailants among his contacts,” said joint commissioner Vishwas Nangre Patil. Rawal’s interrogation led police to a village 12km from Surat, where assailants, Ayush SP (19), Nikhil Chandal (21) and Uday Bali (21) were hiding. The trio was picked up. It turned out they had been supplied weapons by Bunty Patidar from MP who had lived in Dahisar earlier, and knew about Pandey’s jewellery store. The assailants had practised firing the weapons in MP’s jungles.
Patidar hired Rawal and associate, Ankit Mahadik, to be the assailants’ local contacts in Mumbai. On June 29, Ayush, Chandal and Bali arrived here by bus. Rawal picked them up in his car and they did a recce of the jewellery store. The trio ate and slept in the car. On Wednesday, Mahadik went along in an auto to confirm if the assailants on the scooter were landing up at the right location. “As soon as they entered the shop, two of the men opened fire as they did not want Pandey to activate an electronic lock, which would bolt the store shut,” said DCP D S Swami. After the crime, the assailants went to Kashimira, where they abandoned the scooter and hired a car to travel to Gujarat.
At least 30 tolas of gold jewellery was stolen. Two guns used in the crime were dumped by the shooters in Surat but police found one. We are verifying the group’s criminal antecedents and will check if MCOCA can be invoked,” said Nangre Patil.
