Unsolved Crimes: Year after 7 year old was grievously injured by a falling pan, police says ‘no leads yet’

The investigation into where the pan was thrown from, and who threw it, went on for over eight months. (Representational Image)

At around 11 am on March 31, 2017, Hazequa Kapadia was on her way home after tuition classes, while her father had just finished his work and was standing near the window, looking at his seven-year-old walking across the road. A few paces away from their house, however, he heard a loud clang. By the time he ran out towards his daughter, she was lying in a pool of blood, with a grievous head injury.

Hazequa was hit by an iron pan, which was suspected to have been thrown from one of the higher floors of the 22-storey ‘Danish Villa’ building in Madanpura, Nagpada. Parts of her skull had broken into multiple fragments, which got embedded in her brain, leaving her fighting for her life. “When the case was lodged, we didn’t realise it would be so difficult to find the accused in this residential area,” said Nagpada Senior Inspector Sanjay Baswat. A year later, police have put the case in their ‘temporarily dormant’ file. “That means we can reopen it at a later stage if there are any leads,” Baswat added.

The investigation into where the pan was thrown from, and who threw it, went on for over eight months. “A forensic team confirmed that the kind of injury the girl suffered could have only been caused by a heavy object falling from the tenth floor or above,” Baswat said. While police have not ruled out any probability, they believe that the pan could not have accidentally slipped out of someone’s hand. “The grills of the windows are not that broad that a utensil can fall from it. This was someone definitely throwing the pan down. We are not sure if the pan was aimed at the girl specifically,” Baswat said.

While police first made inquiries and checked only those residences facing the road on which the incident took place, they later checked all the flats in the building. “We looked for open grills on windows. We looked for any opening from where a pan could have be thrown. We checked if someone had bought a new utensil, if someone had a similar pan like the one that fell. We even checked the orifices on the walls between flats to see if someone could have thrown a pan from there,” the inspector said.

However, police could not trace the perpetrators. “We even got our forensic team to check for fingerprints, but, by then, the crime scene was compromised as the pan had been picked up by multiple people in order to get to the girl,” Baswat said.

Hazequa’s father Faizan Kapadia, who owns a cycle repair shop, is grateful that his daughter, who spent two months at the Bombay Hospital, survived the incident after undergoing at least three major surgeries.

“When the incident happened, I wasn’t in my senses. For days, I just sat in the hospital, waiting for updates on my daughter,” he said. Hazequa is the eldest of three siblings. “When police asked me for help in the investigation, I went back home and appealed to everyone in the building compound. I assured them that if the person who was responsible for the incident would come forward, I would not press charges and that it would be forgotten as an accident. I told them I just wanted the person behind this to come and pray with me for my daughter. When no one turned up, I almost lost faith in humanity.”

However, his faith was restored by the people who came forward to help his daughter, now eight years old and a Class III student at St Joseph’s High School in Agripada. “Today, Hazequa is completely fine. She has started swimming with the help of the Mumbai YMCA, and is as energetic as she was before. It is a miracle,” Kapadia said.

Hazequa, however, wants her long hair back. “I don’t remember the incident, but I wish my hair would grow fast and become as long as it used to be,” she said.

While she has recovered, reasons behind the incident that injured her so seriously still elude police. “Throwing things from windows is not new here. After the accident, I had requested police to put up nets so that something like this doesn’t happen again. People still throw things from upstairs, the net just keeps them from falling down,” Kapadia said.

The family feels that police did their best. “We received help from police. When they were temporarily shelving the case, they told us and asked if we wanted something else to be done. However, I hope that one day, we will find out who was responsible for the trauma my daughter suffered,” Kapadia said.