Police register another murder case against Palande after new evidence

The Mumbai crime branch, on Sunday, registered another case of murder against accused Vijay Palande after the DNA from a skull found in the Kumbharli ghat in Chiplun did not match with that of aspiring Bollywood producer Karan Kakkad, as expected. Rahul Mahajani reports.

The Mumbai crime branch, on Sunday, registered another case of murder against accused Vijay Palande after the DNA from a skull found in the Kumbharli ghat in Chiplun did not match with that of aspiring Bollywood producer Karan Kakkad, as expected.

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The skull was found at the spot pointed out by Palande, where he and his associate Dhanajay Shinde had dumped Kakkad’s body parts.

The case has been registered at Oshiwara police station as they have already begun investigations there, said Himanshu Roy, joint commissioner of police (crime). Palande will be re-arrested in the case soon.

The crime branch had recovered a torso and skull from the Kumbharli ghat, which Palande claimed were Kakkad’s. But tests revealed that while the DNA from the torso matched Kakkad’s, the DNA from the skull belonged to someone else.

The police sent DNA samples of Kakkad’s mother, Rita, to match with the body parts they found. Police are yet to identify the person whose skull they have found.

Kakkad was killed in March this year and hacked into pieces and packed in plastic bags. Palande and Shinde took the remains of his body in his BMW to Kumbharli ghat. “The accused threw each body part at a different location in the ghat and hence it is becoming very difficult to find the parts,” said an official from the crime branch.

Teams from the crime branch visited Kumbharli ghat in Chiplun thrice to gather evidence and even Palande was taken along with the police to locate the parts. Palande confessed to having murdered Kakkad after he was arrested for the murder of Delhi-based businessman Arunkumar Tikku.

When Kakkad did not contact his family after March 5, his mother and brother Hanish came to Mumbai on March 9 and registered a missing complaint.