Four murders and a missing man

Slum goon with ‘links’

It all started on the night of June 4,with a street brawl,a common enough occurrence in Kurar,and nothing out of the ordinary for Pathak himself,a history-sheeter with 12 cases against him,including attempted murder and one stint as an externed troublemaker.

Local policemen who have picked him up earlier say nobody expected he was more than a “galli ka goonda”,a local toughie and perhaps hired muscle. Originally from Uttar Pradesh,Pathak,whose father recently completed a long jail stint,never displayed any unusual aggression. That’s why,what appears to be a crime of bitter retribution — he was beaten up for roughing up two MNS youths and then went on to meticulously call the victims,kidnap and kill them in grotesque fashion — simply doesn’t make sense.

Pathak took on small construction jobs within the chawl and slum areas,his loyal band of men buying construction goods and electrical hardware on credit from local stores. But times were tough,even with the rent that he got from the eight to 10 rooms around his own in the chawl.

Kurar,and its politics,has changed rapidly in the last few years. What was a lush and hilly vista on the fringes of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park until two decades back,is now a series of winding,narrow lanes with shops and chawls on either side,garbage tossed on the streets,the snarl of autorickshaws never leaving the air and everywhere,signboards erected by builders announcing slum rehabilitation schemes.

“Kurar is 90 per cent slum,” agrees Bhomsingh Rathod,a local Congress corporator whose son Lokendra is with Nitesh Rane’s Swabhimaan Sanghatana,expected to play a significant role in next year’s elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Rathod’s office — bearing the Swabhimaan flag and his son’s name and photo along with Nitesh Rane’s — is located right opposite Ramesh Bar,outside which the Saturday night brawl leading to the murders first broke out.

Rathod says Pathak is a casual acquaintance,somebody who helps with the annual Navratri and Ganeshotsav mandals. He admits he may have sent him an invitation to his son’s mega-wedding celebrations a couple of months ago. “But that was attended by 5,000 people — we handed out cards to people across parties,across mandals,notable people in the chawls. I didn’t know him beyond that,” he says.

Locals say that Pathak liked to be close to those with some power. In an area teeming with slum rehabilitation projects,the politician-builder-goon nexus was an important equation to be a part of and investigators say Pathak was keen to cement his position within the locality,the deadly cocktail of upcoming elections and shanty towns to be vacated providing him an ideal setting.

Rathod denies that Pathak was associated with the Swabhimaan Sanghatana,an allegation made by the youths across the Western Express Highway in Hanuman Nagar and Indira Nagar where the victims lived,nearly four km from Ramesh Bar and 10 km from the murder spot.

Pathak’s desire for revenge,after being thrashed and belittled in his own area by a bunch of young MNS workers,seems to have stemmed more from a need to underline his own position as self-appointed local don than from any longstanding rivalry. Yet,the police’s application seeking custody of the men arrested for the crime states that there appears to be more to the motive than the drunken brawl.

Not an ordinary brawl

On the night of June 4,at about 7:30 pm,Bharat Pudale and Sachin Dhuri,26,had gone to a doctor’s clinic near Ramesh Bar. Dhuri waited outside while Pudale went in to collect payment for a water purifier. A scuffle soon began.

According to one version,Pathak and his friends,enjoying a drink outside,objected to Dhuri staring at them. Pathak reportedly threw a glass or a bottle that landed at Dhuri’s feet. In another version,Pathak found the jangling of Dhuri’s phone irksome and picked up a fight. An argument ensued once Pudale emerged from the clinic. Dhuri called for reinforcements,who arrived shortly — almost all of them MNS workers. They thrashed Pathak who was now alone.

Two youths from this group admit they rained blows on Pathak,but say there was no bloodshed,only warnings against entering one another’s areas. As Pathak’s friends returned,the MNS youths found themselves outnumbered and dispersed in different directions,most returning home,unaware that Pudale had been overpowered and held back.

An hour passed,during which a girl approached the Kurar police with a complaint of eve-teasing against Pathak. Investigators are unsure if the complaint was genuine or an alibi set up by Pathak,who was then summoned to the police station and made to pay a fine of Rs 1,200.

Then,an unidentified man visited the home of Chetan Dhule —one of those involved in the scuffle outside Ramesh Bar — in Indira Nagar,seeking his cellphone number. Dhule,who played the drums,ran an orchestra band,a banjo group,which played at local functions. Dhule was with a friend outside a nursing home where his sister-in-law was admitted,when he got the phone call regarding an assignment for the band.

The trap

“A guy named Sagar was with him then,on the motorcycle,” says a youngster from the area,also a member of the MNS,requesting not to be identified because the party leaders have forbidden them from speaking about the incident. “Chetan Dhule told Sagar that the call appeared to be doubtful,but he proceeded to check it out nevertheless,” he says.

The two other victims,Ganesh Karanje and Dinish Ahire,got similar calls on their phones. Some more boys got the calls too,including Sachin Dhuri,Mahesh Magar,Chetan Shingare and Amit Mane — all were urged to come to different spots to assist their friends or regarding a banjo group assignment. At one spot,Magar,Shingare and Mane saw their friends being bundled into three-four autorickshaws by Pathak’s men and,ran back to Kurar police station.

Dhuri went further on his bike,and told the police that he escaped by the skin of his teeth,making a run for it even after Pathak’s men allegedly grabbed his collar.

But,as Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik admitted,policing in Kurar,barely 15 km from Bandra-Kurla Complex,is not the same as elsewhere in the financial capital.

So the Kurar police told the youths to cut out the melodrama,insisting that the whole thing was no more than a street fight.

Senior police officers are checking the footage from CCTVs at the entrance of and inside the police station to validate allegations that Magar,Shingare and Mane,who first approached the police after witnessing what appeared to be a kidnapping,were themselves briefly detained in the police station premises instead.

“Boys sometimes get late when they’re out with friends,so we didn’t panic until Sunday,” says Dhule’s grieving father in their one-room home with a tarpaulin sheet stretched across the door to prevent rain water from entering.

Dhule’s parents are willing to admit that their son may have been involved in some minor brawls,but nothing that merited such an end. “The policemen who didn’t take our complaint on Sunday should be sacked,what use is a transfer?” asks his father,a watchman by profession.

Search: an uphill task

Through a rainy Sunday,local youths formed search parties and fanned out in the direction that Dhuri had pointed out,walking uphill on rocky terrain towards Appapada tribal hamlet inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. One group found a t-shirt on Monday. It was Ahire’s. Then,further uphill,the boys found their friends’ bodies,naked,spotted and discoloured in places where some form of acid appeared to have been drizzled on them,the smell of fuel in the air,the bodies slightly burnt in places,one’s eye gouged out or bashed in,and all the bodies bearing severe assault marks with the faces smashed brutally. A sniffer dog later led a forensics team to alcohol and salt — the men had been drinking during or after the murderous assault.

As investigators pieced together the sequence of events from evidence and based on the interrogation of five of Pathak’s associates arrested in the subsequent days,some things were clear. There were no tyre marks uphill,which meant the victims were herded uphill on foot,a walk of at least an hour. Post-mortem reports indicated they were killed on Sunday,most likely one by one,the victims’ faeces at the spot indicating their cold fear as they watched what would be their fate. Their phones remain missing.

The five who have been arrested have told interrogators that they didn’t know they would be assisting a murderer — during the walk uphill they’d promised the four that they’d broker peace eventually.

Unanswered questions

A police inspector was transferred and inquiries ordered,but that may not be the sole lapse in policing. Days after the state government announced its intentions to curb alcoholism by raising the minimum age for consuming alcohol to 25 years,Pathak and his men were drinking on the street outside Ramesh Bar,a cheaper option for most streetfighters. Also,the boys saw three-four autorickshaws used in the kidnapping — locating these through the auto unions should be simple,but investigators are tightlipped about which union these belonged to.

Curiously,the MNS has not taken a more strident stand on the murders. “They’re innocent boys,” says Mahesh Pharkase,president of the Kandivli unit of the party,insisting that there could have been no previous enmity. But six days after the murder,Pathak remains on the run,several teams of policemen giving chase with all 12 units of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch involved. Mumbai is yet to hear the last of the Kurar murders.