‘Ruler of night’,he played with trouble

Around 10 am on Friday,he got a call on his phone from a neighbour and friend,asking him to meet near gate number 5 of Dhobi Ghat. Bleary-eyed and groggy,he walked about one kilometre to reach the spot where he found Mumbai Police officers waiting for him.

Known as raat ke baadshah (rulers of the night) across their neighbourhood,the juvenile and his brothers would emerge outside only after sunset,neighbours said. “Recently,they had been caught for petty thefts by the railway police,” one neighbour said.

The suspect and his friends,most of whom are drug addicts and alcoholics from the fish markets close to the slums,would also frequent the mills every day,the neighbours said. “Shakti Mills compound was a favourite haunt for these people. Everyone would go there and do their mischief,” said a resident of another slum.

The 60-year-old grandmother of the juvenile,who raised him and his two brothers after their parents died,says the phone calls the suspect answered in the last 24 hours were a curse.

She said she had a heated argument with him over a call from the man said to be the main suspect in the crime. “At 5.30 pm,he was helping me sell lemons outside our house when he received a call. He told me he is going out to meet the caller,but I knew he is bad company. I told him ‘Don’t go!’,but he didn’t listen,saying he would return home for dinner,” she said.

The boy and his two older brothers have been living with their grandmother since 2003 while their two sisters have been sent to their mother’s village near Hyderabad. Their mother died while delivering a stillborn when the suspect was five years old,and his mentally ill father had committed suicide before his mother died. The grandmother took care of the boys by selling lemon and chillies in the neighbourhood.

“The suspect is quite hefty,he loves to eat a lot of mutton. He fed himself through petty thievery,and any small odd-job he would do occasionally,” said one neighbour. Occasionally,he also earned money by cutting chicken at a local broiler in Worli Naka.

The tiny house the family moved into 60 years ago from Bangalore is sparsely equipped,with a few steel plates and tumblers,a stove,two pillows and two gunny sacks of storage.

When The Indian Express was speaking to the grandmother,Mumbai Police Crime Branch officers walked in to take some clothes of the boy. Lifting a pair of jeans and a few pieces of freshly washed underwear from a gunny sack,she tells the police: “He changed his clothes after coming home. I always make it a point to collect all the dirty clothes since I do all the washing.”

The police took the jeans along with a checked shirt,a vest and the washed underwear.

While the boy’s birth certificate says he was born on February 28,1997,Mumbai Police officers said they are yet to determine his age.

“Going by his physique,we doubt he is a minor. The birth certificate could be doctored or forged. We will still send him for the medical test and make the conclusion,” said a Crime Branch officer.

The grandmother maintained that he has been framed by the main suspect. “If he is guilty,he should be severely punished. But if he isn’t,the police should send him back to me,I will teach him a lesson,” she said.