3 min readMumbaiOct 29, 2014 12:55 AM IST
First published on: Oct 29, 2014 at 12:55 AM IST
By Rohit Alok
A piece of cloth with the name of a customer written on it led the Shivaji Nagar police to the tailor who allegedly murdered and sexually exploited the 12-year-old girl, whose dead body was found Sunday morning, said police officials.
The victim, who used to stay with her parents and sister in Bainganwadi, Shivaji Nagar, went missing on Saturday evening, and her body was found in a dumpster near her house on Sunday morning. She had been the victim of unnatural sex before she was strangled to death.
“The victim’s body was found wrapped in a mat, which also contained several tatters of cloth. One of these pieces of cloth had the name ‘Haseem Saab’ written on it. As this is a practice followed by tailors to mark the orders of their customers, we started inquiries with tailors and garment stores in the area. We checked the records of all the tailors that we made inquiries with, and in the records of one of these tailors, identified as Kasim Yusuf Khan (30), we found the same name,” said an officer with the Shivaji Nagar police.
Khan was then taken into custody for further questioning, during which he allegedly confessed to his crime. )“Khan, in his confession, has said that the victim had visited his tailoring shop twice on Saturday saying that she wanted alterations made to a scarf that he had stitched for her grandmother. Out of irritation, he slapped the victim hard and she fell down,” said the officer. The accused is alleged to have raped the child after.
Khan then allegedly waited till it was dark enough to dispose of the body. During this time, the victim’s grandmother visited his shop once to ask if he had seen the victim, to which he replied in the negative, while in reality, the victim’s body was still in the back of his shop. Close to midnight, Khan allegedly wrapped the body in a mat and disposed it of in the dumpster.
The police said that many aspects of Khan’s confession were still being verified, including the exact cause of the victim’s death. While Khan admits to having killed her, he maintains that she died after he slapped her and denies strangling her.
DCP (Zone VI) Sangramsinh Nishandar and ACP (East region) Chhering Dorje could not be reached for comments.
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