Naigaon murder: Victim’s sister got CCTV footage that helped cops nail the couple

A man has been implicated in the alleged murder of his former girlfriend after CCTV footage was handed over to police by the victim's sister. The footage reportedly shows the man entering the building where the victim lived and later leaving with his wife carrying a blue travel bag. The man was questioned by police and eventually confessed to the murder. The victim's body was later found in a different location. The man allegedly hid his marriage from the victim and had been pressuring her to withdraw a rape complaint.

The crucial CCTV footage that implicated a 34-year-old man in the alleged murder of his former girlfriend was procured and handed over to the Naigaon police by the victim’s sister. Manohar Shukla, with the help of his wife, Poornima, allegedly disposed of the body at Pardi in Valsad district of Gujarat.

Naigaon murder: Victim’s sister got CCTV footage that helped cops nail the couple

Jaya Mahat, a makeup artist, tried for days convincing the police to begin an investigation after her sister, Naina Mahat, went missing on August 9. Despite several attempts, the police were reluctant to even scan the CCTV recordings of Sunteck City in Naigaon East where Mahat stayed or check her call detail record (CDR), Jaya said.

Shukla worked as a costume fittings man on film sets while Mahat, 29, was a hair stylist.

“I requested the police many a time to question her former boyfriend, Shukla, but they called him nearly a month later, on September 3. He then misled them by saying she was out of the country for a shoot, and he was unaware where she had gone. The police let him go without even verifying his claims,” Jaya said.

Frustrated, Jaya took permission from the police and went to Sunteck City where she spent six hours sifting through the camera footage and found Shukla entering the building on August 9 afternoon and leaving alone. Later, Shukla and Poornima were seen entering the building and leaving with a blue travel bag, Jaya said.

“I then went to Naina’s flat and found her bag missing. I also found her passport and Aadhaar which confirmed that she could not have gone out of the country,” she said.

“Only after I showed the CCTV footage to the police, did they call Shukla again, but he kept making excuses of being in Bageshwar Dham or Sultanpur. When he finally appeared before the police on September 12, he broke down and confessed to the murder,” Jaya said.

A police officer from Naigaon police station said after a missing person complaint was filed by Jaya on August 14, they assumed that she had been missing since August 12. “Hence, we checked the CCTV recordings from August 12. However, after we got the CDR of Mahat, we found out that her phone had been switched off since August 9.”

The Naigaon police then learnt that the Pardi police in Gujarat had found a decomposed body on August 18 and had filed an accidental death report.

“Had the police called him for questioning earlier I could have got Naina’s body for cremation,” said Jaya, who went to Gujarat to claim the body but found out that her post-mortem had been conducted and an NGO had cremated her body.

“We identified her by the tattoo of a trishul on her forearm and by the bedsheet in which she was wrapped. The police have not been able to find the blue bag in which Naina’s body was kept or even tell me how the couple could have gone all the way to Pardi with the bag and their two-year-old daughter on a bike,” Jaya said.

According to the police, the couple travelled nonstop to Gujarat through the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway with Poornima holding the bag and the child sitting on the motorcycle tank. “Shukla was confident that the body would not be found in the dense forest,” the police officer said.

Police officers said the CDR helped them find that the last call made by Mahat on August 9 to Shukla was just before the CCTV cameras captured Shukla entering her building.

Shukla told the police in his statement that minutes before Mahat’s death on August 9, she had called him and threatened to consume poison if he did not buy her a house and marry her.

“He said when he reached her flat a fight erupted between the two. She threatened to consume poison after writing a suicide note blaming him. In a fit of rage, Shukla said he retaliated by saying that if she wanted to die, he would help her and then he shoved her head in a bucket of water several times,” the officer said. “We have found two sealed bottles of phenyl and rat poison in her 14th floor apartment where she stayed alone.”

Shukla allegedly told the police that after he realised that she had died, he put her on the bed and went to his house after grabbing the flat keys and her mobile phone which he threw away on the way. He then told his wife about the murder and the duo returned to Mahat’s flat. “The couple removed a travel bag from Mahat’s closet and put her body inside it,” the officer added.

On Wednesday, a court extended the couple’s police custody for two more days.

Investigation revealed that Shukla had hid his marriage from Mahat for more than a year. In 2019 when Shukla broke the news to Mahat, she demanded that he leave Poornima and marry her. The couple tried to reason with Mahat by taking her to Tungareshwar on Shukla’s bike but on the way, a fight broke out between the three. The couple tried to leave her there, but Mahat’s purse was stuck in the bike, and she was dragged for more than 50 metres. The couple then left her there. She filed a complaint of assault against the two. Later that year, she approached the Waliv police and filed a complaint of rape against Shukla. Since 2019, the couple had been pressuring Mahat to withdraw her rape complaint, police officers said.

The Naigaon police have taken the blood sample of Jaya to match the DNA of the body to identify her.