Solving Crime: How a bar in Maharashtra held the key to three murders in state

When the Ratnagiri city police began their probe, they found that Mayekar had last messaged her brother a day after she went missing. In her message, she claimed she was fine and urged her family not to worry about her.

“When we checked her mobile phone location, it indicated the device was at Durvas’s bar at the time of sending the message. When Durvas was questioned, he claimed he had not met her recently. This exposed his lie,” Nitin Bagate, Superintendent of Police (SP), Ratnagiri, said.

In the last week of August, the police picked Durvas up for interrogation. It was at this time that a Ratnagiri police team investigating another case landed at Durvas’s bar. Rakesh Jangam, 28, who worked as a waiter at Durvas’s bar, had been reported missing by his mother. She approached Bagate, who had recently taken charge as SP, and informed him that her son had been missing since June 6, 2024.

“When I asked the investigating officer to pick up Durvas for questioning in Jangam’s case, they found that the city police station team had already picked him up for questioning in Mayekar’s case,” Bagate said.

Within days, Durvas was arrested after allegedly confessing to the murder of not just Mayekar, but also two men who worked at his bar.

According to Bagate, during sustained interrogation in Mayekar’s case, Durvas broke down and started crying. He said that he was in a relationship with her, but did not want to marry her as he wanted to marry someone from his own caste.

“When she refused to leave him, he claimed to have strangled her with a wire in a room atop his bar. He disposed of her body at Amba Ghat. We also have footage from the bar where he is seen dancing after the murder, relieved that she was out of her life. He felt he had gotten away with two murders earlier and felt this would pan out the same way,” an officer said.

Realising that he was vulnerable, the police questioned Durvas about Jangam’s case as well. “He confessed to having killed Jangam last year as he had seen him murder another bar employee, Sitaram Veer, 55, thus confessing to a third murder,” Bagate said.

Durvas allegedly told the police that he and Veer often drank alcohol together. When he stopped talking to Mayekar, he blocked her number. This allegedly prompted her to contact Veer to get through to Durvas.

“Durvas suspected that Veer and Mayekar were getting close and caught him messaging her one day, following which he brutally assaulted him at the bar. He then asked Jangam to take Veer to his residence and tell his family that he had passed out after drinking,” Bagate said.

However, after he was dropped off at his residence, Veer succumbed to his injuries. Durvas and his father, Darshan Patil, then approached Veer’s family and gave them some money to conduct the last rites, the police said. Veer’s family cremated him and did not suspect anything amiss.

“Jangam, however, had seen Durvas beat Veer to death. Durvas was worried Jangam would spill the beans, so he paid him money and asked him to leave Ratnagiri along with his family,” Bagate said.

When Durvas later learnt that Jangam had not left Ratnagiri, he allegedly began plotting his murder. One day, he got Jangam drunk and took him in a vehicle to Amba Ghat, as per the police. Once they reached there, Durvas and another waiter, Nilesh Bhingarde, allegedly strangled Jangam and threw his body at Amba Ghat, the police added.

After his confession, the police took Durvas to Amba Ghat to look for Mayekar’s and Jangam’s bodies. “To reach Amba Ghat, one has to walk 40-50 minutes through a deep rain forest, as the ghat is quite deep. The humidity is so high that within a few days, Mayekar’s body had decomposed. We only found her skull after 10 days. Jangam’s body was not found as it was disposed of a year earlier,” Bagate said.

Apart from Durvas, the police also arrested his alleged accomplices, Bhingarde and Vishwas Pawar. Earlier this month, on further investigation, the police also arrested Durvas’s father, Darshan Patil, who had approached Jangam and given him money to flee Ratnagiri.

With the Patils under arrest, the local excise department on September 4 sealed Sayli Bar, the site where Mayekar was killed.