Four months after a 26-year-old man was found dead on the Shil Phata road near Kalyan, the Shil Diaghar police on Friday arrested three people working in a scrap unit in connection with his murder, while a fourth is still wanted.
According to the police, the deceased, Jamil Khan, was also a scrap collector. He used to sleep on a cot outside his brother Adil’s tea shop on Shil Diaghar road. He was found on the cot with his head bashed in around 6 a.m. on April 10. He was taken to a local hospital, where he was declared dead before admission. The police registered a case of murder and initiated inquiries into the matter.
An officer who was part of the investigation said, “We scanned the feed from CCTV cameras around the murder spot for clues and also made inquiries about any residents or people working in the area who might have been missing since the murder. We finally zeroed in on four men who used to work as scrap collectors in the same area where Jamil was found dead. We tracked their cellular locations and made inquiries with local informants, and learned that they had fled to their native Uttar Pradesh.”
The police subsequently picked up Jagnarayan Verma (29), Nandram Verma (23) and Pramodkumar Verma (23) after cellular location mapping placed them near the murder spot on April 10. The police also found CCTV footage around the spot that confirmed their location at the time of the murder.
“The three men, and another who is still wanted, were stealing scrap from a yard near Adil’s tea store, when Jamil heard them and woke up. He threatened to tell the owner of the yard, whom he knew well, about them. As they were scared of legal action, they returned in the early hours of the morning and killed Jamil, after which they fled the city,” Deputy Commissioner of Police D.S. Swami, Zone I, Thane Police, said.