3 min readMumbaiApr 12, 2024 11:55 PM IST
First published on: Apr 11, 2024 at 11:07 AM IST
On February 29 this year, the Karjat police station received information from a local about a murder. A man’s body was spotted lying in the bushes in the jungles of Kashele village on the Karjat-Murbad Road. His hands were tied and his throat was slit, the police were told. The Karjat police immediately registered a murder case and the Raigad Crime Branch – Karjat is in Raigad district – initiated a parallel investigation.
Initially, the police did not find anything on the body or the crime scene to help them ascertain the man’s identity. This left them with no choice but to circulate photos of the deceased in the locality and among police informants. The move worked. The police received reliable information from an informer that the deceased was a man named Suraj Atmaram Parihar.
A native of Nepal, Parihar was a Panvel resident who used to work as a caterer at various hotels and resorts, the police found out. Since he had worked in Nepal, Sikkim, Assam, and Mizoram before coming to Panvel, the police realised that it would be tedious to make inquiries at every hotel to check if he had worked there.
Meanwhile, another team scouring the articles found at the crime scene noticed the name of a resort, ‘Mount View Resort’, printed on the T-shirt used to tie Parihar’s hands. This became a crucial lead. When the police enquired at the resort, they learned that they gave such T-shirts to their labour contractors. The resort also provided a list of labour contractors who had worked with them recently.
The police then, using technical investigation, zeroed in on a suspect, Dilip Dhansani, 35, a Dharavi resident. After he was detained and interrogated, Dhansani allegedly admitted to having killed Parihar. “He told the police that Parihar was instigating other labourers not to work for him. This, Dhansani claimed, had led to him suffering losses. Dhansani then decided to murder Parihar with the help of an aide, Vijay Waghri,” said Surendra Garad, senior inspector of Karjat police station.
“The two decided to first give a ‘treat’ to Parihar and then kill him when he was fully drunk. They took him to Karjat in an autorickshaw. There, they tied his hands with the T-shirt and after slitting his throat with a knife, Dhansani threw his body into the bushes,” said a Karjat police officer.
Later, the same T-shirt gave the Raigad Crime Branch its biggest lead in the case.
Dhansani and Waghri were arrested and are currently in judicial custody.
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