Surat: The city crime branch jointly with police teams of south Gujarat districts cracked the murder of Surat-based woman homoeopath doctor, whose body was found in a rivulet near Waghai in the Dang on April 28.
Police arrested two persons, including deceased Beena Virani’s paramour Sanjay Dobariya (36), a businessmen living in Kapodara, and Tariq Shaikh (27), an employee in his unit and native of Maharashtra. Dobariya, a native of Ditla village in Amreli was nabbed from Dhari, while Shaikh was nabbed from Beed. He is a native of Chausala village near Beed.
Virani was strangled by the duo in Laskana on the city’s outskirts and later dumped her body in a rivulet on 100 km on Waghai-Saputara road. Besides practising homoeopathy, Virani also worked as an agent for the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). She came in touch with Dobariya, an electrical engineer, through her husband Nilesh, who is also a homoeopath doctor. Nilesh and Dobariya are friends for the past many years. Nilesh got married to Beena in 2008 and later she developed close friendship with Dobariya.
The relationship between them blossomed, but it was exposed to her family members in 2012 when Nilesh and Beena started having serious disputes in their married life. However, they reached a compromise following family’s counselling and Beena was told to discontinue her relationship with Dobariya. However, on April 27, Beena went to meet Dobariya and urged him to start living with her, the police said. Dobariya did not want her to meet him publicly after they were exposed. He told Beena over the phone not to come to meet him at his unit Surat Transformers located in Lakshman Nagar Industrial Plot at Laskana village. But, she still went there, resulting in a heated argument between the duo. In a fit of rage, Dobariya took her in a narrow space behind his unit and strangled her with a cable wire. At the same time, Shaikh also entered the unit from the rear door and helped Dobariya by holding Beena’s legs. They later went to the Dang in Dobariya’s car to dump the body.
The accused told police that he threw the woman’s two mobile phones in river Tapi after damaging them. The postmortem report revealed that she was strangled, but her identity was not established then.
“A team of some experienced cops from other districts of south Gujarat were sent to join the investigation in Waghai. The effort of sharing the images of the woman helped identify her. Later, with the help of Surat crime branch, we detected the case,” inspector general of police, Surat range, G S Malik said.
Nilesh, who had lodged a missing persons report of Beena in Amroli police station on April 28, was sent the photo of the body by a known person. He later contacted the police. Following the woman’s identity, the police started investigation based on the closed circuit television footage and mobile records, which pointed to Dobariya’s involvement.
“It was a joint investigation by the Dang police and Surat city crime branch. Our crime branch team joined the investigation after the rural police requested and we also helped them in arresting the accused,” city police commissioner Satish Sharma said.
The arrested duo in police custody on Monday