Body goof-up may hit probe in another case

Vadodara: It was a goof up that may hamper investigations in the death of an unidentified person whose body was recovered from a water canal in Halol on May 1.
The Karelibaug police had earlier believed it to be the body of Suraj Shah who had been murdered by three persons. The body was sent for post-mortem and then handed over to Shah’s relatives who even cremated it believing that it was him.

The case will now be handed over to Waghodia police station for further investigations. “We are yet to get the case papers. Once we get them, we will begin investigation and scan all missing persons reports,” said Darshan Rao, police sub-inspector, Waghodia.

Karelibaug police said that they had taken viscera samples of the unidentified body but the cause of the death is yet to be ascertained.

After Shah’s body was fished out on Thursday, the embarrassed cops claimed that they had suspected that the first body they found wasn’t his.

When asked that if the cops had suspected that the first body they found wasn’t of Shah then why did they hand over the body to the relatives instead of preserving it, Karelibaug police inspector, R I Jadeja said, “We had shown the first body to the relatives and they recognized it to be his. Also, the body’s structure matched that of Shah.”

“We still had our doubts so we took DNA sample of the first body. But we had to hand over the body to Shah’s relatives for cremation,” Jadeja told TOI.

Shah’s brother Samir too said, “We thought that the first body was of Shah as many features including the bald head matched him. The second body, though, is surely of Shah as we found the keys he kept apart from the trousers on the body. We cremated him on Friday.”

Shah was murdered over financial dispute and his body was dumped by the three accused in a canal near Halol town in Panchmahal district.

Rohit wanted to mislead police

Prime accused advocate Vijay Rohit had earlier planned to dump Suraj Shah’s mobile phone in some train to send the cops on a wild goose chase. But he decided against it due to CCTVs on the railway station. Rohit then dumped Shah’s phone in Dumad from where it was recovered by the cops on Friday.