A twice-decorated police officer - retired "encounter specialist" Emmanuel Samuel Amolik - was arrested on Sunday for his alleged involvement in the murder of a builder from Navi Mumbai, Sunil Kumar Loharia.
The shooting of Navi Mumbai builder Sunil Kumar Loharia that was captured by CCTV cameras outside his office.
Amolik, who retired in 2011, is a two-time winner of the President's Medal and has the arrest of gangster Charles Sobhraj to his credit.
Loharia, 50, was shot and stabbed by two motorcycle-borne assailants on Saturday in front of his office in Navi Mumbai. One of the killers escaped. But the other, 35-year-old Venkatesh Shettiar, was caught red-handed. Later, the police arrested the other, 28-year-old Wajid Qureshi, from Mumbra.
"Shettiar said Amolik sent him to kill Loharia," said Raosaheb Sardesai, senior inspector of Vashi police station. The motive was a quarrel, he added.
Loharia's brother Sanjeev, however, said local businessmen were behind the murder. "My brother never had a fight with Amolik. The police will not investigate the case as they are hand-in-glove with the killers," said Sanjeev.
"We have no such information," responded Sardesai. The two men, he said, had a squabble in January, when Amolik was almost run over by Loharia's car.
