MUMBAI, January 25: As he finished a four-year prison term for robbery in June last year, Albert John D'Souza (35) had long forgotten the murder he committed nearly nine years ago.But D'Souza's accomplice in the killing of a Kurla resident in 1989 squealed on him after they fell foul over sharing a booty and Albert was re-arrested as an accused in the murder on January 17.
Based on his former partner's tip-off, the special branch of Mumbai police pieced together the sequence of events which led up to the murder. ``It didn't take D'Souza long to break down and confess when we placed the details before him,'' a police officer told.
According to police inspector Praful Bhosale (zone II, special squad), D'Souza and his accomplice Joseph visited Paul Victor Rodrigues at his house in Kurla early on June 26, 1989. To gain easy entry the duo posed as clients of the lawyer Rodrigues worked for. They gagged and repeatedly stabbed the man with a gupti (rapier) when he resisted to their demands for money.
However, with no valuables or cash around, they fled with a VCR and a tape recorder.
Last week D'Souza and another known criminal Arun Sagwekar were nabbed by the police after a chase in the narrow lanes of Tulsiwadi in Tardeo. They were marked `wanted men' following a spate of robberies in south Mumbai, Bhosale said, adding that little did they expect the arrests to reopen a closed case.
Police sub-inspectors Ashok Khot and Bal Jadhav, members of the investigating team, said D'Souza besides leaving no clues at the site of the murder had also managed to escape the police dragnet for several years. He also managed to keep the police off his back by changing his area of operation from Sahar Village area to the southern parts of the city.
Besides joining hands with several robber gangs in south Mumbai, D'Souza also worked for some underworld outfits in the area, added Khot. He was named in over 11 cases of robberies and murder attempts and sentenced to jail in connection with an attempt to murder and
committing a robbery in 1990, said the police.
While D'Souza has been remanded to the custody of Kurla police, who have charged him with murder, his accomplice Joseph is still at large, said sub-inspector Bal Jadhav.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
