Second arrest in Bandra Reclamation senior’s murder

MUMBAI: A second arrest in the murder of a 64-year-old woman in Bandra occurred as police apprehended a colleague of the primary suspect for aiding in the crime.

MUMBAI: A second arrest has been made in the murder of the 64-year-old woman, who was killed in her apartment at Bandra Reclamation five days ago. While police arrested Sharif Ali Shamsher Ali Shaikh, 27, a call centre employee accused of the murder, on Tuesday, they have since arrested a colleague of Shaikh for helping him dispose of the murder weapon and hide the gold jewellery Shaikh had stolen from the victim’s flat.

Sharif Ali Shamsher Ali Shaikh was the first arrest

Bandra police on Wednesday arrested Rahul Naidu, 27, who worked at the same call centre as did Shaikh, at Saki Naka in Andheri East. Naidu said he had disposed of the murder weapon, which the police are working to recover.

Meanwhile, the Bandra police investigating the case said that Shaikh had tried to create an alibi for himself after he allegedly killed Rekha Ashok Khonde, a resident of Kanchan Cooperative Housing Society. He even accompanied the police to the crime scene, seemingly to divert suspicion from himself.

Shaikh, who has been remanded to police custody till February 17, lived in a nearby building and had known Khonde and other residents of Kanchan Cooperative Housing Society, since he was a boy. He had been helping Khonde with daily chores such as visiting the bank and helping he make doctor’s visits.

Police said Shaikh is believed to have murdered Khonde five days ago, after he tied her to a chair. He robbed jewellery worth ₹15 lakh from her apartment and fled with the booty. They said that to create an alibi, Shaikh had dialed Khonde’s mobile phone a number of times after the murder. He even called her daughter, Drushti, who lived elsewhere in the city, to say that her mother had not been answering his calls.

Khonde’s body was discovered by the Bandra police in a decomposed state, early on Tuesday, after residents of the building reported a foul odour emanating from her second-floor flat. Shaikh had accompanied the police to the apartment, apparently to avoid suspicion.

The Bandra police said Shaikh told them that for the last five days, Khonde had not been answering her phone and showed them his call logs. “We scanned the CCTV footage of the building and found Shaikh entering the building and leaving with a bag five days ago. This raised suspicion,” said a police officer from the Bandra police station. Based on this, Shaikh was questioned and he later confessed to the murder.