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Journalism of Courage
On the morning of May 14, 2006, the police control room received a phone call about a man’s torso stuffed inside a plastic bag kept on a handcart in a mutton market near a municipal Urdu school in Nagpada, south Mumbai. The murderers had chopped off the man’s head, both hands and legs and left only the torso at the spot to ensure the victim was never identified. The remaining body parts were cut into small pieces and thrown in a nullah.
Back then, officials of the Sir JJ Marg police, where the murder case was registered, tried to identify the man by checking for all missing complaints in Maharashtra but got no leads. Nothing was left on the torso which could help to identify him. The police took blood samples for DNA analysis and disposed of the body before ‘temporarily’ closing the case. Gulabrao More, an assistant police inspector from the Nagpada station, was also trying to get leads in the case as a detection officer but he also drew a blank.
Twelve years passed and then in 2018, More, who was then an inspector (crime) with the MRA Marg police station in south Mumbai, received a phone call from one of his informers.
It was More’s weekly off and he was on his evening walk at the Mahalaxmi race course. The informer told More he knew two brothers who murdered a man named Kishan Kharva, 57, from Nagpada in 2006. The informer said they can take action against him in case his tip turned out to be wrong. More realised that the informer had an axe to grind with the brothers but the gruesome murder was etched in his memory.
Thus the hunt began for Firasat Ali Shah, 48, and his brother Irshaad Ali Shah, 43, who sold old clothes for a living. A few days later, the police traced and arrested them in south Mumbai but the duo did not utter a word about the crime. The police then decided to trace the family of Kharva. They learned Kharva had a wife and four children, including three daughters, and lived somewhere in Kamathipura, a place in south Mumbai.
After several days of searching, they traced his wife Bansi, 60, who lived in a building on KK road, Mahalaxmi, near south Mumbai. When the police asked Bansi about her husband, she started crying. The police said they have some information about her husband and asked her to accompany them to the police station.
After some hesitation, Bansi went with them. The police used their tricks and Bansi confessed she paid money to the two men to assault her husband but they murdered him. A police official said, “We felt bad while arresting her as she had four children, including a 13-year-old son and a 21-year-old unmarried daughter. Her other two daughters were married. But we had to do our duty.”
Bansi told the police that her husband was a drunkard who assaulted her and his behaviour towards his daughters was not good either. Bansi sold utensils in exchange for old clothes and had business ties with the brothers. The police alleged she sold her ornaments to pay Rs 2 lakh for the contract killing. The two brothers took Kharva to their house after getting him drunk and murdered him. They also carried butcher knives with them. Seven months after her husband’s murder, she filed a missing complaint at the Nagpada police station and years later she got his death certificate.
During further investigations, the police learned Firasat was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in a murder case registered in 1996 in Delhi. He was in Tihar jail for five years and after his conviction by a sessions court, he appealed to the high court and got bail. In 2016, when the high court upheld the sessions court conviction, Firasat was asked to surrender but he did not and went absconding.
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