Six arrested for killing laundryman in Navi Mumbai

The police said there were severe injury marks on his heads, eyes, necks and other parts of his body.

Two days after a laundryman was murdered, six people were arrested for the crime. Mahendra Kanojiya, 35, was found dead under the staircase of a row-house at sector 12 in Kharghar on Tuesday evening.

The victim was found lying in a pool of blood under the staircase of a row-house in Kharghar. (Representational photo)

“Around 6.30pm, people from the nearby shops heard a commotion but they did not pay much attention to it as the shutter was down,” said Dilip Kale, senior police inspector of Kharghar police station.

“After sometime, they saw three people running from the room. They found Kanojiya lying in a pool of blood,” he said.

The police said there were severe injury marks on his heads, eyes, necks and other parts of his body. “It was obvious that Kanojiya was assaulted with some sharp objects. There were as many as 15 stab wounds in his body,” Kale said.

“We had registered a case under sections 302 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and formed multiple teams to crack the case. We arrested the six from different places such as Kamothe, Kalamboli, Kharghar among others,” he said.

Lalji Ramprasad, 41, Gokul Kumar Mandal, 28, Rajeev Sharma, 21, Akhlakul Ansari, 28, Somnath Pandey, 23, and Sunil Bharti, 24, were arrested on Friday.

Kale said the main accused Ramprasad suspected that the laundryman had an affair with his wife. “Kanojiya had been having meals at Ramprasad’s house for several years. Ramprasad had warned him against getting close to his wife,” he said.

“Ramprasad got the other people and hatched a plot to kill Kanojiya,” he said. The accused have been remanded in police custody till February 15.