MUMBAI: Three men were arrested and a juvenile was detained within 48 hours of the brutal murder of a transgender person on a busy street at Goregaon West.
Suresh Mastud, 43, was repeatedly attacked with a hammer and a knife at the Link Road on Wednesday afternoon.
"Each of the accused had a separate grudge against him which led to them coming together and plotting the attack," said ACP Deepak Phatangare.
The accused, Dheeraj Vishwakarma (20), Vinay Yadav (22), Rajesh Yadav (23) and the 16-year-old juvenile lived in the same neighbourhood as Mastud.
The accused had made attempts to eliminate Mastud on a couple of occasions in the past but had failed. On Wednesday, Yadav, who worked with Mastud, accompanied him to a restaurant where Mastud was to meet members of a non-profit group that he intended to join.
While the meeting was on, Yadav texted the other three about Mastud's whereabouts. They arrived on a motorcycle and waited some distance away.
After the meeting ended, Mastud left the restaurant and the accused pounced on him.
They fled and later met up at a relative's place in Mira Road. The relative suggested they should surrender at which the accused left the house and moved to a vacant apartment in Vasai.
"We picked them up after tracking down their location through technical surveillance methods," said detection officer Abhijeet Jadhav.