Hair strand helped solve Mysuru quack’s murder case: Police
The victim, Shaba Sherif, was abducted from Mysuru on August 1, 2019 and he was killed on October 20, 2020 at a house in Nilambur.
A strand of hair helped the Kerala police secure a conviction of the main accused in the murder of a traditional healer (quack) from Mysuru whose body or remains were never discovered by investigators, police and prosecutors said on Thursday.
The additional district and sessions court in Manjeri in Malappuram district found three people guilty of the abduction and murder of 60-year-old Shaba Sherif in October 2020. Judge Thushar M will pronounce the quantum of punishment for the convicts on Saturday.
The convicted were identified as Shaibin Ashraf (37), a businessman from Nilambur, and his accomplices Shihabudheen P (36) and Nishad Naduthodika (32). Nine others, including Ashraf’s wife, were acquitted for lack of evidence against them.
“The three men were found guilty of homicide not amounting to murder, illegal detention, conspiracy and destruction of evidence among other charges. The victim, Shaba Sherif, was abducted from Mysuru on August 1, 2019 and he was killed on October 20, 2020 at a house in Nilambur. The FIR was registered only in May 2022 after information about the murder came out in the form of a confession by one of the accused to the police that year,” said EN Krishnan Namboothiri, the public prosecutor in the case.
He further said that the conviction of the three key accused in the case was a “commendable achievement” by the Kerala police mainly because the victim’s body or remains were never found. He said the victim’s body was hacked into pieces and thrown into the Chaliyar river by the accused in 2020.
He pointed out that it was a single strand of hair, belonging to the victim, and found by the police from the car belonging to Ashraf confirmed the identity of Sherif as the murder victim.
“As part of scientific evidence, the police collected 42 hair strands. It was a single hair follicle of the victim Shaba Sherif, collected from the accused’s car, that came back positive from a mitochondria DNA test. It established the identity of the victim,” said the prosecutor.
Former Malappuram SP Sujith Das, who oversaw the investigation of the case at the time, told local media that the court verdict was a “matter of great pride” for Kerala police and sends the message that a conviction is possible even in cases where a murder victim’s remains are never found.
“It was a very challenging case because we came to know about the murder only one and a half years after it happened. The victim was from Mysuru and so no missing complaint was filed in Kerala. We found that the victim was kidnapped from Mysuru and brought to a home of Ashraf in Nilambur where he was tortured for almost a year as part of pressuring him to reveal the secrets of his medicines,” said Das.
“After killing the victim, the body was dismembered and thrown into the Chaliyar river. The accused tried to eliminate all the evidence in the murder. But as they say, the hand of God was present in the form of a hair strand from which we extracted DNA and ultimately led to the identity to Sherif. When we checked, his family had filed a missing persons case in 2019 in Mysuru,” he said.
The SP said that the case came to light following differences of opinion between the first accused Ashraf and some of his co-accused in 2022. Ashraf, he said, filed a fake complaint about three of his associates breaking into his home and fleeing with a laptop and ₹3 lakh cash. “Ashraf’s associates — Sakeer, Noushad and Saleem — attempted suicide in front of the Secretariat, claiming there was a threat to their lives from him. When interrogated, police said Noushad divulged details about the murder in exchange for becoming an approver in the case,” he said.
Das added that the murder case of Sherif also led to the police acquiring information about two alleged murders committed by Ashraf in the Gulf countries. “Since the murders took place on foreign soil, the high court transferred the probe from local police to CBI. The CBI has filed charge sheets in those two murder cases,” he said.
