Solving Crime: Killer loses sleep, makes victim’s statue — how police solved a 1997 murder after 16 years

“Saalo pehele Bhanumati Thakkar naam ki ek aurat ka murder kiya tha Tanaji aur Sambhaji ne. Inn donno ko arrest kar lo saab tho shayad uski aatma ko shanti milegi or main or mere gaav vale bach jaenge (Years ago a woman named Bhanumati Thakkar was murdered by Tanaji and Sambhaji. Sir, please arrest these two men and maybe her soul will get some peace and I and my fellow villagers will be spared),” was the tip-off received by a police constable who was posted in Crime Branch unit IV in 2013.

The police did not believe the informant’s claims but when he revealed more details later, they decided to follow up. The informant said the case was registered with a police station that opened six months before the murder happened and it took place just after Navratri.

An investigator said, “We started our investigation by looking for the case papers at the Sion police station. We went through the whole godown where the case papers were dumped and twenty days later, we managed to recover them.”

The police said Bhanumati Thakkar, a housewife, was murdered inside her second-floor home at Vrindavan Society in Sion. She stayed alone as her husband Amrutlal, a gold merchant, lived in Dubai and visited Mumbai once a year, while their son resided in Pune. The murder came to light on October 14, 1997, when her house help Maya Pawar, who was Tanaji’s wife, rang the doorbell.

According to the FIR, Pawar detected a foul smell emanating from the house and after calls to Thakkar went unanswered, neighbours alerted the police and forced their way in.

The police found the home ransacked with furniture upturned, cupboards open and their contents strewn on the floor. In a far corner of the kitchen, Thakkar was found lying in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds. Gold and cash worth Rs 2.55 lakh were missing from the house.

But the police failed to trace the killers, and they closed the case after submitting an A-classified report in court in 1998.
“After we were tipped off, we located all these documents and after going through the facts of the investigation, we started working on the leads our informant had given,” said an investigator.

The informant also revealed that Tanaji was having sleepless nights since the crime was committed and would often dream of Thakkar. “Tanaji then consulted a priest, who advised him to make a statue of the woman and conduct some rituals,” said an officer.

“He then made a statue and would often perform some ritual or the other. When his neighbours asked him about the statue, Tanaji replied that it was a woman who had died in an accident in Mumbai and she was appearing in his dreams.”

Later, investigators found Shelar’s mobile phone number. According to the details with the network provider, it appeared that he lived in Goregaon’s Bhagat Singh Nagar. A team went there but could not find him. A police officer, pretending to be someone from a mobile phone company, called him and asked him to verify his address after which Shelar said he was working in Turbhe, a suburb of Navi Mumbai.

A police team reached Turbhe, called Shelar outside his office and detained him. Shelar confessed to the crime and revealed Tanaji’s role, after which the latter was arrested from Cuffe Parade.

After his arrest, Tanaji revealed that he hatched a plan to commit a theft inside Thakkar’s house after she insulted him in 1997. “His wife Maya worked in her house and he would frequently go there to pick her up. Thakkar and Tanaji knew each other and she would sometimes even give him money,” said an investigator.

“But on one instance, Thakkar insulted him after he asked her for money. And the same evening, he happened to meet his friends, including Shelar and the person who tipped off the police about the murder. Tanaji told them about his plan and asked them to join him, which was turned down by the informer. Our informer chose to inform us now because since the statue was built, people staying in the village started suffering. Their animals were dying and their children were often falling ill due to which our informer started believing that it was Thakkar’s spirits that had been troubling them. So 16 years down the line, he tipped off the police and the murder case was solved,” said a police officer.