Juhu murder: Cops find son with box in toll naka footage

MUMBAI: Bolstering investigations into the murder of senior citizen Veena Kapoor, Juhu police have retrieved footage from surveillance cameras mounted on toll nakas between Mumbai and Matheran, that captures her son, Sachin, in a car with a cardboard box.
The box was used for allegedly packing Kapoor's body. This piece of evidence could link Sachin with the site where the body was eventually found.
Sachin had allegedly murdered his mother on December 6 at their Juhu apartment before wrapping the body in a plastic cover and putting it in a cardboard box. With the help of his househelp and co-accused, Lalkumar Mandal, he allegedly disposed of the body in a valley at Matheran.
The camera grabs at toll nakas show Sachin with the cardboard box while going to Matheran and returning to Mumbai without it.
Police have already seized a baseball bat used for the murder and footage from the Kapoors' society which showed Sachin taking Mandal's help to carry the cardboard box into a car. "We are now searching for cameras and a digital video recorder (DVR) from inside the flat which Sachin is believed to have dumped in the Matheran valley. There is a possibility he destroyed the cameras and DVR before dumping them," an officer said.
Investigators said the trigger for the murder was a trivial issue. "The mother-son duo was already at loggerheads for a long time. They lived in separate bedrooms. On December 6, Sachin rang a bell to summon Mandal to his room," said an officer. When Mandal did not turn up, Sachin rang the bell again. According to Sachin's claim, his mother then switched off the bell which caused him to lose his cool and attack her.
Before a magistrate's court on December 8, Sachin had said his mother was "trying to evict him from the apartment and used to provoke him". He had also claimed that "his mother would switch off the lights and the bell..."
Kapoor was separated from her husband, who passed away in 2021. Her other son works with a multinational in the US. He sensed something amiss when his mother wouldn't respond to his phone calls on December 6 and alerted the security guard. Juhu police was subsequently informed.