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Knife used in malad murder found
The crime branch (Unit IX) finds a bread knife with which Lieutenant Jerome Mathew of the Indian Navy allegedly dismembered the body of Neeraj Grover, reports Debasish Panigrahi.
The crime branch (Unit IX) on Saturday found a bread knife with which Lieutenant Jerome Mathew of the Indian Navy allegedly dismembered the body of Neeraj Grover after the murder at his fiancée’s residence in Malad on May 7.
A senior Crime Branch official, who requested anonymity pending forensic tests on the knife, said the instrument was found in the jungle bushes in Manor, not far from the spot where the three bags containing Grover’s body pieces had been allegedly burnt by Lieutenant Mathew and his betrothed, small-time Kannada actress Maria Monica Susairaj.
Grover, a creative head with a television production house, had on May 6 ostensibly come to help Susairaj settle into the new flat she had shifted into, but stayed the night. Lieutenant Matthew had found Grover and Susairaj in the flat upon arrival from Kochi, where he was doing an aeronautical engineering course. A heated exchange of words had followed and Mathew allegedly stabbed Grover. Grover’s body was then disposed of by the two. “The knife was purchased by Maria Susairaj from Hypercity mall along with two sport kit bags on May 7,” the Crime Branch official said.
The knife was thrown into the jungles after the bags with Grover’s remains were sprinkled with petrol and burnt. The Crime Branch team also recorded the statement of employees of the petrol pump at Bhayander from where two cans of petrol were purchased by the two. The bread knife was found by a Crime Branch team that inspected the spot in the Manor jungles on May 7.
