Victim and weapon unknown, but Mumbai gangster to face trial 6 years later

This is one of the three cases of murder registered against gangster Vijay Palande and his associate in April 2012 by Mumbai Police’s crime branch. But even after six years, the prosecution remains clueless about its details.

A local court in Mumbai on Monday will begin a murder trial against a gangster in a case in which the identity of the dead is unknown and no one knows how and when the person died.

A sessions court in Mumbai last month charged gangster Vijay Palande (in photo) and his associate Jagdish Kailash Shejav for the murder of the unknown person in 2012. (HT Photo)

Last month, the sessions court charged gangster Vijay Palande and his associate Jagdish Kailash Shejav alias Dhananjay Shinde for the murder of the unknown person in 2012.

They were also charged with conspiracy for murder, destruction of evidence and for an act done with common intention under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

“It is a case where the deceased is unknown, the age of the deceased is unknown, the weapon used for murder is unknown, the cause of death and the time of death too are unknown,” advocate Prashant Pandey, who represents Palande, said.

This is one of the three cases of murder registered against Palande and his associate in April 2012 by Mumbai Police’s crime branch. But even after six years, the prosecution remains clueless about its details.

Experts said the case was “peculiar” and the accused could be acquitted.

“If the prosecution fails to bring evidence about the motive and cause of death, the accused [men] are more likely to get acquitted,” criminal lawyer Amin Solkar said.

Ayaz Khan, another criminal lawyer, said that in a case like this, a charge of murder is erroneous.

“To charge the accused for murder, the prosecution needs to say when the person was killed, how and why he was killed. In the absence of the answers, the charge of murder cannot be proved. The accused would definitely benefit from this,” Khan said.

“In my opinion, the charge itself cannot be framed. There has to be uncontroverted prima facie evidence against the accused,” Prakash Shetty, a criminal lawyer, said.

Palande was arrested for the murder of Arunkumar Tikku, his landlord and a senior citizen, in 2012 and was later booked for the murder of Karankumar Kakkad, a Delhi-based film producer.

While Palande was being interrogated for Tikku’s murder, he confessed to having killed Kakkad with the help of his alleged partner, Simran Sood, a model, and two of his associates. They claimed to have chopped Kakkad’s body and dumped it at Kumbharli Ghat in Chiplun.

Palande agreed to show the police the spot where Kakkad’s body was dumped and the investigating team managed to recover 18 human bones from the site.

But during the forensic examination, it was found that some of the bones did not match with the DNA of Kakkad and his family but did so with the skull recovered from the same spot.

On the basis of this report, police concluded that along with Tikku and Kakkad, Palande and his associates had killed one more person and disposed of the body in the same place. The police then registered a third murder case against Palande.

The prosecution on Friday produced those bones in the court as part of a compliance procedure before beginning a trial.

The court ordered the evidence to be preserved properly and observed that it would be difficult to store it in the court. It said the evidence should be produced as and when it was required, according to the defence.