Circumstantial evidence helped nail the culprit

Police Inspector Mahesh Tawde, the investigating officer of the Pallavi Purkayastha murder case, said circumstantial evidence recovered from the scene of the crime played a major role in securing the conviction of arrested accused Sajjad Pathan.

Tawde, who was an assistant police inspector when Purkayastha was found murdered at her Wadala flat in August 2012, said the exhaustive collection of evidence from the scene of the crime as well as during subsequent investigation helped the case a lot. “We had collected evidence in the form of the murder weapon, the blood-stained clothes which Pathan had discarded and bits of his skin and hair from the victim’s body, which were sent for DNA comparison and came back as a positive match,” he recalled.

Apart from circumstantial evidence, statements from two of Pathan’s friends also helped the case. Pathan had called them up after committing the crime and told them what he had done, after which he asked for money so that he could flee the city. Their statements were treated as extra-judicial confessions.

“It was a challenging case as there were no eyewitnesses to the crime. Even the address that Pathan had registered with the building was incomplete and the photograph that he had given was an old one. His cellphone, which we were tracking, was only intermittently switched on and his arrest was a result of 10 per cent technical surveillance and 90 per cent ground work,” said Tawde.