MUMBAI, April 19: The Malabar Hill police have registered a case of murder in connection with film producer Vijay Sippy's death. Sippy's body was found early on Saturday in the compound of Urvashi Apartments at Napean Sea Road, where he lived with his wife Maya and son Vishal in a 17th-floor flat.Since the involvement of an outsider has been ruled out by the police, the focus is now firmly on the family and the servants who were present in the flat on Friday night. Senior officers today said security guards and the liftman have confirmed that nobody had taken the lift or the stairs up late in the night on Friday after Sippy and Maya returned from a party at Bombay Gymkhana. They are also discounting the possibility of Sippy having been murdered outside his house as there were no stab injuries or marks of struggle on his body. Also, he was wearing a nightgown when his body was discovered early on Saturday, which proves that he went into his flat and changed to go to bed.Another reason why police aregiving more weight to the family-dispute theory is the fact that Sippy's relationship with his wife was far from cordial. Sources said there were frequent quarrels between the two and more often than not Sippy's former wife, an NRI, used to be the reason. Maya, people close to Sippy family say, was upset over her husband's refusal to snap the ties with his ex-wife.Another angle that police are looking into is a mix of domestic unrest and a property dispute. Maya's mother, a royal of the family of Jadejas from Saurashtra, owns the Napean Sea Road flat in which Sippy has been living for the last 25 years with Maya and her son, Vishal, born of her first marriage. Though Sippy purchased another flat at Altamount Road, he stayed there for a very brief period in 1993. Police are trying to find out if Sippy's mother-in-law was interfering in his family life. Domestic servants are being interrogated for answers to some vital questions.What probably prompted police to directly register a case of murder (IPC302), which is rather unusual, is the fact that Maya had not lodged a complaint with the police. Usually in such cases police initially lodge a case of accident and convert it to a case of murder only after investigations confirm their suspicion.Maya has, however, claimed that she had taken sleeping pills on Friday night.Sippy's death came to light after the police received a call from a securityman around 7.55 am on Friday morning. The body was identified by Sippy's friend Domnic Pinto half-an-hour later. Till then Maya was not aware of her husband's death.
