MUMBAI: A 65-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly killing a 30-year-old man and then sodomising the body. The police said that both men were drug addicts and were partners in many a crime. The accused, Vijay Ghewar, and the victim, Vikram
Minama, had got into a fight over who should keep a cellphone that they had stolen. The two men used to steal phones from train commuters, said the police.
On Thursday, the two stole a cellphone and, according to their mutual agreement, Ghewar kept the phone to himself. Minama snatched the phone from Ghewar, saying the "cellphone was too fancy and of no use for an old man". Before Ghewar could grab the phone back, Minama slipped away, said a police officer.
Furious at being cheated, Ghewar started scouting for Minama. "Ghewar made three trips between
Borivli and Churchgate, hoping to find Minama but he failed to," said a police officer.
Unable to find him at the usual spots that they often frequented and hung around at, he returned to Marine Lines where he found Minama asleep on a footpath. "He grabbed a paver block and hit him repeatedly on the head, smashing it. He then sodomised him and fled," said a police source.
The body, which was discovered on Saturday, was sent for a post-mortem and the police circulated photos of the deceased to many police stations and learnt that the deceased was a drug addict against whom many theft cases are registered with the railway police.
The police also tapped their network of informants. "We learnt from police officers that he was a close associate of Ghewar who had gone missing. We finally found him in Sion within 24 hours of the murder," said senior police inspector Vasant Vakhare.
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