Unsolved Crimes: Four years on, no headway in murder of five-year-old on Borivali road

On August 31, 2014, the Kasturba Marg police had received information that a woman had found the body of her daughter at Borivali. Express photo by Nirmal Harindran

IT HAS been nearly four years since the body of a five-year-old girl was found on a pile of clothes, a few feet away from the pavement she lived on with her family in Borivali. Her killers are yet to be traced.

“I still read news stories of similar cases closely, hoping to find some connection… with the help of which the case could be solved,” said a police officer, who was part of the initial team of investigators from Kasturba Marg police station.

On August 31, 2014, the Kasturba Marg police had received information that a woman had found the body of her daughter at Borivali. The girl used to live with her family, belonging to a nomadic community, under the flyover near the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The body bore signs of rape.

The investigation had revealed that, on the night of the incident, the girl, her siblings and her mother had slept under the flyover around midnight. “We inquired with all of them whether they had seen anyone moving around suspiciously or if they heard any sound. Since most of the community members used to do hard labour throughout the day at road construction and repair sites, they were tired and sleeping… they had heard nothing,” a police officer said. Since a similar incident had taken place nearly a fortnight ago at Kandivali, the police first began looking for clues to see if one person was behind both the crimes.

At one point, the police also investigated the role of someone known to the girl. “Most of the male members of the community said that they were in Pune. We verified this… a CCTV footage at a PCO in Pune proved that they were not in Mumbai at the time of the incident,” the officer said. The police first cracked down on drug addicts roaming around in the Kandivali-Borivali-Dahisar stretch. “We rounded up nearly 100 men but none were found to be involved. There was no CCTV camera in the immediate vicinity. But we analysed the footages of cameras installed at private shops and establishments over a kilometre away and found an autorickshaw driver whom we thought was suspicious. We also came up with a description but could never trace him,” the officer said.

“In the CCTV footage, we saw another man loitering around the railway tracks, but he couldn’t be traced either. I feel either of the two men were behind the crime.”

Vitthal Damgude, then a senior inspector at Kasturba Marg police station, said: “The policemen had made all efforts, including relying on local informants and getting DNA tests conducted, but the case could not be cracked.”
The family has since migrated. Police said they had moved to Gujarat in search of livelihood.