A senior police officer said the two murders were unrelated. A 48-year-old constable with Pune Police was murdered with a sharp weapon, allegedly by a man with a criminal record, on Tuesday midnight in Budhwar Peth area in the heart of Pune city.
Constable Sameer Sayyed (48) was attached to Faraskhana police station. Senior Inspector Rajendra Landage, in-charge of the police station, said, “He had left the police station around 9-9.30 pm after finishing the day’s work. It seems he had stepped out of the house around midnight for some other reason. When Sayyed was in Budhwar Peth area, he was stopped and attacked by history-sheeter Praveen Mahajan. Sayyed succumbed to injuries later.”
Constable Sameer Sayyed, who was attached to Faraskhana police station, was on his way home from work.
Officials said some local residents informed the police about the fatal attack on Sayyed and also that Mahajan was the one who attacked him. A manhunt was launched for Mahajan, who was arrested later. “We are still investigating the motive behind the murder… probe teams are looking into some leads. Primary investigation suggests that the two had an argument, following which Mahajan attacked Sayyed with a sharp weapon. While the reason behind the argument seems something that happened at that very instance, we have not ruled out a past dispute,” said Landage.
Mahajan (36) has a few violent crimes registered against him and was externed from Pune city limits recently for a period of one year. The Maharashtra Police Act empowers police officers of Deputy Commissioner of Police or Superintendent of Police ranks to extern or banish a criminal from specific jurisdictions if there is reasonable belief that the person can pose danger to law and order based on past record. By being present within the jurisdiction of Pune Police at the time of the attack, Mahajan was in violation of his externment order.
In an unrelated incident three hours later, not far from the location where the constable was murdered, a commercial sex worker, Rani Shaikh (24), was brutally hacked to death by a man whom she knew from her native village in West Bengal.
“We have identified a suspect and have launched a search for him. He knew the deceased from her native village in West Bengal and used to visit her often. We now know that the two had an argument few days ago, when the deceased woman had attacked the man. The murder seems to be fallout of that dispute. The two incidents are unrelated to each other. We have formed separate teams to probe the two cases,” said Landage.
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