Serial molester left country after police intensified probe: Navi Mumbai police

The Navi Mumbai police investigation has also shed some light on why the Mumbai police, and later the CID, did not yield much. “Qureshi told us that when he found that there had been increased police vigil in the Nehru Nagar area he stopped stepping out of his house. Later in 2010, months after the police had launched an intensive manhunt in the area and started collecting DNA samples of several locals, he went to Saudi Arabia for work. Hence, by the time the police efforts had intensified, Qureshi was no longer there,” said Tushar Doshi, deputy commissioner of police (crime), Navi Mumbai. The police said that by the time he returned, the family comprising of his mother and four brothers had moved to Mira Road.

An officer said that Qureshi initially denied he was involved in the Nehru Nagar cases and told them that he resided in Nehru Nagar in 2009. However, we checked his passport and found that he left in August 2010. “He knew that we suspected him of involvement in the Nehru Nagar cases where the punishment was harsher as murder was involved. However, when we confronted him with the DNA match he confessed to the involvement in the two cases,” Kumar said. He added, “When we questioned him about molesting women, he said that ‘he doesn’t understand what happens to him’ and that ‘he goes crazy’ in the moments when he is committing the crime,” the commissioner said.

Kumar said that earlier in the CID when they were investigating the case, they had sought a psychological profile of the killer from the Delhi-based AIIMS hospital on the basis of the nature of the crimes. “The report had said that the killer appeared to have psychopathic tendencies,” Kumar said.

Doshi said Qureshi worked as a salesman who went to meet builders to supply material needed at under-construction sites. “So, he knew the isolated under-construction buildings whose rooftops he had used several times to molest victims,” Doshi said. Even in the Nehru Nagar case, the bodies of two of the girls had been found on rooftops, including one on the top of a building in police lines opposite the Nehru Nagar police station that was probing the matter.

An officer said prior to 2010, he had targeted girls below 10 years of age. “On the two occasions the girls had started shouting, he killed them by throttling and strangulating them. Since 2015, in the cases against him in Navi Mumbai and Nallasopara, he had been targeting older girls. He knew the police action that followed the murders of the two girls in Nehru Nagar and desisted from committing any more murders. There were several occasions when he fled from the spot when the girl shouted for help,” said ACP (crime branch) Ajay Kadam.