Mumbai: Seven men arrested for murder of youth at Reay Road station

Purushottam Karad, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Western Railway), said that a perusal of the CCTV cameras installed at the station showed that the attack had been recorded. “We developed the pictures of the attackers’ faces and passed them around to our informers in the area.”

The informers identified one of the men as Ghodapdeo resident Hrithik Kadam (19), who works as a delivery boy. After picking him up from his home in Ashthavinayak Chawl on Thursday, the GRP’s Special Task Force arrested his alleged accomplices — Mangesh Sarjine (20), Prathamesh Tarpe (21), Rohan Khedekar (19), Abhishek Patil (20), Nilesh Ojha (21) and Amit Mishra (21). All the men live in Ghodapdeo, Kalachowkie and Sewri.

The police alleged that the plot to kill Shaikh was hatched by Sarjine. “The main accused and the deceased were in a relationship with the same girl. When the deceased came to know of this, he and a few friends beat up Sarjine with bamboo sticks on October 18,” Karad said, adding that Sarjine then vowed to get even with Shaikh. At 10 pm on Tuesday, the accused allegedly lay in wait at Reay Road station after coming to know that Shaikh would be arriving there shortly. Karad said that when Shaikh did not arrive for several minutes, Sarjine’s accomplices were on the brink of abandoning the plan.

However, the police said that the men waited for five minutes more and Shaikh arrived at platform number one at 10.42 pm. “Sarjine took Shaikh some distance away to talk. Soon, the men got into an argument and Sarjine and his accomplices began to punch and kick Shaikh,” Karad said. Sarjine stabbed Shaikh with a knife he had brought from home and then fled with his friends, the police said.