Alcoholic’s nightmare helps cops solve a murder case

On the day of the murder, the alcoholic had witnessed the killing before he passed out drunk at Bapane - the murder spot. After witnessing the whole incident, the 45-year-old started hallucinating that the same three guys who killed Mali were killing him.

MUMBAI: A 45-year-old alcoholic from Kaman, who kept on having reoccurring nightmares of the night he witnessed the murder of a 20-year-old on November 8, helped the police crack the murder case by revealing the identity of the victim and the perpetrators.

The victim, Lovesh Mali, 20.

According to the crime branch officers, the victim, Lovesh Mali, 20, was killed by three of his friends, and his body was dumped in the bushes along the Mumbai Ahmedabad Highway on November 8. His skeletal remains were recovered by the Naigaon police on November 21, four days after he was reported missing.

The arrested accused have been identified as Devidas alias Pakkaya Suraj Singh, 30, Anand Rangnath Sajane, 30, and a 16-year-old minor was detained.

On November 17, after Mali’s family realised that their son, an auto driver, had not returned home for nine days, they registered a missing complaint with the Naigaon police station.

Four days later, on November 21, two salesmen had taken an autorickshaw from Chinchoti to Bapane at 6.30pm. After getting off, the two went towards the bushes on the highway to relieve themselves. “The stench of a decaying body caught their attention, upon checking, they found the skeleton of a man with shorts and shirt on, slipper in his feet, and a thread tied to his right ankle,” Shahuraj Ranaware, senior police inspector, crime branch, unit 2 MBVV police, said.

They notified the police, who recovered the skeleton and sent it for post-mortem to JJ Hospital. On November 24, the post-mortem report confirmed that the man was bludgeoned to death by a stone, after which they registered a case against unknown persons for murdering the unidentified victim.

On the day of the murder, the alcoholic had witnessed the killing before he passed out drunk at Bapane - the murder spot.

After witnessing the whole incident, the 45-year-old started hallucinating that the same three guys who killed Mali were killing him. Every time he consumes alcohol and passes out, he shouts, ‘Yeh merko mar denge (they will kill me)’. One day, after consuming alcohol and passing out, he started hallucinating and screaming again in a small bar in Naigaon. A woman who runs the bar and regularly sells him alcohol informed a person about the incident. The person then informed a crime branch officer, after which the eyewitness was taken for questioning. The man then narrated the entire episode to the police about the murder and the identity of the victim on Monday and said that Mali is an acquittance and they live in the same area. The police then arrested the main accused, Singh, who told the police that the victim was driving his auto when he crashed into a dumper. Singh said that Mali owed him ₹5,000 for damages but refused to pay. On November 8, Singh was drinking with Sajane and a 16-year-old boy when he got into a fight with Mali, and the trio allegedly killed him, said the police officer. The three then left the spot in Singh’s rickshaw. On the way, Sajane, who was drunk and wanted drugs, tried to snatch a mobile phone of a passerby but was caught. “For four days, Sajane was in Naigaon police custody, but he did not reveal that he had committed a murder minutes before being apprehended for mobile snatching,” said Ranaware. After detaining Singh, the officials contacted the Naigaon police, who found a match for the skeleton with Mali’s missing person’s report registered at the same police station. They then approached Mali’s family, who identified the remains by his clothes and the thread tied around his ankle. The two accused have been booked under sections 302 (murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.