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Journalism of Courage
It was a set of items unwittingly left behind by three men who entered a Mumbai home to commit a robbery and fled after committing a murder that led the police directly to them.
In 2011, three men barged into a home in Andheri in the western suburbs of Mumbai at around 3.30 pm with the intention to rob. At the time, a 35-year-old woman, Aruna Pandey, and her 12-year-old son were alone at home. The woman resisted the robbers but was attacked with a knife, while her son was tied with a bedsheet from the home. The three men robbed jewellery worn by the woman and four cell phones before fleeing. They also threatened the boy against complaining to the police.
After they left, the boy managed to untie himself and saw his mother in a pool of blood. He stepped out of his home crying when he met a neighbour, whom he informed about the incident. The police were then alerted and the woman was rushed to the hospital but was declared dead on arrival.
The police went to the house to find clues about the three men. The men had entered the kitchen in their bid to remove the jewellery the victim was wearing. But in their hurry to escape, they left a few items on the kitchen counter – a white tiffin box, a packet of cigarettes and a photocopy of a Class X certificate in a polythene bag. The Maharashtra Board Secondary School Certificate (SSC) was from 2004 and provided the first clue about the men.
Based on the certificate, the police first approached the board and learnt that the accused had appeared as a private candidate but had been enrolled in a school earlier. The police then approached the school and got details of the accused, including his photograph, a part of the school record.
The police arrested Zubair Idrisi based on this address and he led them to the other two accused, Kartik Kaunder and Yusuf Khwaja.
During the trial before the court, the police also examined the principal of the school to establish that the certificate seized from the house belonged to Idrisi. The minor boy, a witness, also deposed a year later before the court, identifying the accused. He told the court that his father was out for work and that the men had entered by forcefully pushing the door.
The accused first claimed that his father had borrowed money and that they were to collect it but later began attacking them. The total value of the jewellery and phones stolen was Rs 32,500, the police had said then.
While the accused had claimed in their defence that the police could have planted the certificate to implicate them, the principal’s statement showed that the police had approached her before the arrest, seeking information based on the seized certificate. The police suspect that Idrisi was carrying the certificate for some other purpose but forgot the polythene bag before escaping the victim’s house.
In 2017, a Mumbai court sentenced the three men to life imprisonment on several charges, including murder.
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