A defunct rice mill, 2 bodies & an ‘admission’: How a double murder plot unravelled in Gujarat

Pathan was arrested for the alleged murder of the woman with whom he claimed that he had a relationship over the past year, while the DNA samples from the skeletal remains – suspected to be of Suhana – have been sent for forensic tests, Navsari Superintendent of Police Rahul Patel told The Indian Express on Friday.

The Navsari police had on Tuesday found a woman’s body – with injury marks – on the premises of the closed Maa Asha rice mill. The police sent it to the Civil Hospital for postmortem. The dead woman’s photographs were circulated for identification when a resident of the Grid area, Nafisa, recognised the body as that of her 32-year-old sister Suhana Shaikh, who told the police, had been missing “for the past couple of months”.

Nafisa told the police her sister Suhana, who hailed from Mandvi in Surat district, married Faisal Pathan, a resident of Bardoli, seven years ago. They have a son who is now staying with his grandmother at Bardoli. After getting separated from Faisal around a year ago, Suhana started staying with her elder sister Nafisa at Navsari. Faisal used to come and meet her, occasionally, she told the police.

On Tuesday, assuming that the case was solved, Nafisa registered a complaint of murder against Pathan at the Navsari town police station on Tuesday.

However, a twist came when the police arrested Pathan on Wednesday and on interrogation, he revealed the body found was not of Suhana but another woman, with whom he was staying for the last year as a live-in partner.

Confused by the statements given by Pathan and Nafisa, the police roped in more witnesses who identified the body of the woman found on Tuesday.

During further interrogation, Pathan admitted to have killed her inside the closed rice mill. Pathan also admitted to having killed Suhana at the same place after pushing her from the second floor of the property around two months ago.

On Thursday, a police team reached the spot with Pathan and dug out the skeleton of Suhana buried on the premises of the rice mill.

SP Patel told The Indian Express, “After getting misled, our teams worked hard and found the two bodies. We are trying to find and reach out to family members of the alleged girlfriend, who was identified by a few other people in the area. The DNA samples from the skeleton were collected and sent to FSL at Surat to confirm that it is of Suhana. Faisal told us that the motive behind both the murders was frequent quarrels.”