Alert informer, prompt action help cops nab man who killed girlfriend

Datta Nalawade, deputy commissioner of police for zone 10, credited the detection team of Sakinaka police, saying they had the accused in custody just three hours after the alleged crime and even before the murder case could be registered

MUMBAI: Alertness of a police informer and prompt follow-up by Sakinaka police led to the arrest of a man who had allegedly murdered his girlfriend on Monday in a Navi Mumbai hotel and returned to the city late at night.

Alert informer, prompt action help cops nab man who killed girlfriend

Around 2am on Tuesday, assistant police inspector Valmiki Kore from Sakinaka police station received a call from an informer, saying a man in his neighbourhood was very restless since having returned home a little after midnight. “He suspected that the neighbour, later identified as Shoaib Sheikh of Mohili village, had committed some crime and alerted us,” said Kore.

When police apprehended the 24-year-old Sheikh from Sakinaka junction, he said he had planned to take his girlfriend Amy alias Amit Ravinder Kaur, 35, out to celebrate her birthday before killing her.

Sheikh, a high-school dropout who works in the garage owned by his family, told police that he met Kaur through a social media site in September last year. The two dated for a few months before Kaur expressed her interest in marriage. Sheikh was apprehensive of the same as Kaur had a teenaged daughter; he also suspected her of being involved with other men, he told police.

In order to confirm what Sheikh had said, officials from Sakinaka police station got in touch with their counterparts at Turbhe police station, under whose jurisdiction the hotel was located. They confirmed that a body was indeed found in a second-floor room of the hotel. Subsequently, Turbhe police registered a murder case against Sheikh under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.

Datta Nalawade, deputy commissioner of police for zone 10, credited the detection team of Sakinaka police, saying they had the accused in custody just three hours after the alleged crime and even before the murder case could be registered. “If the Sakinaka police officers had not acted quickly on the tip-off, the accused could have run away from the city. They have saved a lot of resources by intercepting him at Sakinaka junction in the middle of the night before he had the chance to flee,” he said.

Sheikh was handed over to the Navi Mumbai police on Tuesday afternoon. The post-mortem report of the victim is awaited, said police.