Forensic lab to be roped in for investigation

It has been a year since underworld gangster Chhota Rajan’s henchmen shot down senior journalist J Dey at Powai, but the Mumbai police crime branch’s potboiler on why J Dey was killed still lacks credence.

It has been a year since underworld gangster Chhota Rajan’s henchmen shot down senior journalist J Dey at Powai, but the Mumbai police crime branch’s potboiler on why J Dey was killed still lacks credence.

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Crucial pieces of evidence, which the crime branch expected in terms of cyber forensics from the mobile phones and computers seized from the accused, are yet to be delivered.

The State Forensic Science Laboratory at Kalina has retrieved negligible data from the seized items to lend credence to the crime branch theory behind Dey’s murder.

The crime branch, which questions the state FSL’s efficiency, now plans to submit the seized mobile phones and computers to a Central Forensic Laboratory. “Once we get back the items from the state FSL, we would decide which laboratory we would want to move,” said a senior crime branch official, requesting anonymity.

Cyber forensics hold crucial to the crime branch case, especially after the agency came out with the theory that Dey was killed at the behest of another scribe Jigna Vora, who was arrested and is currently in judicial custody.

According to the crime branch, it was Vora who instigated Chhota Rajan to carry out the killing and had called the gangster 36 times.

Crime branch also claimed that Vora had messaged Rajan too. But neither the content of the calls or message is known to the Mumbai crime branch, leaving the elite police unit on a sticky wicket.

The crime branch is yet to arrest Nayan Singh Bisht, who supplied the weapon and underworld gangster Chhota Rajan.