55-yr-old man arrested for shooting son in Mumbai

The Mumbai police on Tuesday arrested the father of 33-year-old Vicky Ganji, who was found murdered in his Oshiwara home on Monday night. Srinivas Ganji, 55, was charged with shooting his son. “We have arrested the victim’s father, Srinivas Ganji, under sections 302 and 201 of Indian Penal Code for murder and causing disappearance of evidence,” said Manoj Kumar Sharma, additional commissioner of police, West region.

On Monday night, Srinivas reported Ganji’s death to the police and said he had been on the ground floor when he heard a noise like a firecracker from the direction of their home. He claimed he had rushed upstairs to find Ganji lying in a pool of blood. However, the police found discrepancies in Srinivas’s version, which raised their suspicions. Ganji’s body had no injury marks barring a single bullet wound under the chest, and there were no signs of forced entry into the apartment.

According to CCTV camera footage, Ganji entered his flat at 8.40pm. Srinivas was seen in the building a few minutes later. At 8.52pm, Srinivas was seen coming out of their flat, pacing about on the first floor and muttering to himself.

The police believe Ganji was killed around 8.45pm.

On Tuesday morning, the police found a country-made pistol in Srinivas’s scooter, which was parked in the building compound. The scooter was seized and a forensic team collected evidence from the crime scene.

Srinivas was brought in for questioning on Tuesday morning and later confessed to killing Ganji.

Approximately six months ago, Ganji, an alumnus of St. Andrew’s College in Bandra, lost his job as the vice-president and business head of a public relations firm. At around the same time, his three-year-old marriage also ended in divorce. A police officer privy to the investigation said that Ganji had started to consume drugs and had a stint in a rehabilitation centre from which he came out only three months ago.

First Published: Jul 24, 2019 03:16 IST