Salon executive’s body dumped in Wadala drain: accused to cops

Accused being produced at Kila court in South Mumbai on Saturday.

A day after arresting two of her colleagues at celebrity salon chain BBlunt on charges of murdering her, Mumbai Police on Sunday claimed one of the accused has told them that they dumped the body of 27-year-old Kirti Vyas in a drain near a cinema hall in Wadala.

Police have arrested Siddhesh Tamhankar (28) and Khushi Sahjwani (42) after the DNA from two drops of blood that had seeped into a mat in the boot of Sahjwani’s car matched Vyas’s DNA. Vyas went missing from her home in south Mumbai a month-and-a-half ago.

Police said Sahjwani had “almost confessed” to the murder and told interrogators about the location where they dumped the body.

“Tamhankar has not confessed to the murder. Sahjwani said both of them dumped the body in a nullah towards the western end of the theatre. This matches the CDR that show both in that area on March 16 night, the day Vyas went missing,” an officer said. “We will take the accused to the spot as there are three nullahs there. On Monday, divers will be called in to recover the body,” he added.

Another officer said, “Locating the body is top priority. We have obtained the details of the sewers in the Wadala area from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to see which way the body could have been pulled by the current. It has been over 50 days since the body was dumped.”

On the motive behind the murder, he said, “So far we know that Vyas was unhappy with the work of Tamhankar, her subordinate, and had put him on notice. There are several unanswered questions. But the focus of the investigation now is to trace the body.”

Vyas was last seen on March 16 morning in Sahjwani’s Ford EcoSport after Sahjwani and Tamhankar picked her up from outside her home in Bharat Nagar, Grant Road, and allegedly offered to drop her to work. Vyas was a finance manager at BBlunt’s Andheri (West) branch. Tamhankar, an accounts executive, was Vyas’s junior in the finance department, while Sahjwani was the academy manager.

Police arrested the duo on Saturday after they found that the blood on the mat in the boot of the car matched with Vyas’s DNA. “In case of strangulation, there is no blood flow immediately. A few hours later, however, there can be discharge of blood from the nose,” said an officer with the Maharashtra Forensic Science Laboratory.