Mumbai: Andheri senior citizen's murder a contract killing?

MUMBAI: Three days after 75-year-old Gulabi Shetty was found strangulated in the washroom of her Andheri flat, D N Nagar police are probing a lead that it was a contract killing. The city crime branch is conducting a parallel investigation into the murder.
"We are working on technical details to crack the case. We are also verifying a specific tipoff that it could have been a supari killing," a police officer told TOI. Incidentally, Shetty's husband was murdered in 1975.
Shetty, who had returned from a pilgrimage in Mangalurur two weeks ago, lived alone in the flat on the terrace of a ground-floor space she had rented out to Chaitanya restaurant near Valia College, barely 30ft from Versova police station. "There are two ways to reach her flat -one from the restaurant and another from a local temple, but there are no CCTV cameras at both spots," said the officer.
The murder came to light on Sunday night when Shetty's niece, Sujatha (53), found the body in the washroom with her hands and legs tied with a saree. Sujatha told the police: "On February 19, my aunt asked me to come over to her place on Sunday at 4pm and she had found me a 2-BHK flat. On Sunday, around 2.15pm, I called her, but she did not pick up. After repeated calls went unanswered, I went over. The door was ajar. The I found the door ajar and her body in the washroom." The police have also recorded the statements of Shetty's grandson (her daughter's son), other family members, her tenants and restaurant staffers, but have no leads.
Neighbours and the restaurant staffers told cops that Shetty hardly interacted with anyone. Even her daughter hardly came over, said cops. "No one knows where she kept the Rs 2 lakh rent she got from tenants. The killer ransacked the flat to mislead cops into assuming that robbery was motive, but her phone and cash were untouched," said a cop.