Crime branch traces prime suspect for bizman’s murder to Kalyan slum

Pune: The Pimpri Chinchwad crime branch on Monday arrested the prime suspect in the murder of trader Hitesh Mulchadani (23) on July 23 .

Police said Shahbaz Siraj Qureshi (22) of Khadki Bazar was taken into custody from Kalyan in Thane district.

Mulchandani had intervened in a fight between six men and some staffers of a hotel owned by his friend, Rohit Sukheja (26), in Pimpri Camp on July 23 around 3.20am. The staffers had objected to one of the men, who had gone to the facility to purchase beer, urinating near the hotel area.

Infuriated at this, the assailants picked up the fight and one of them smashed a beer bottle on the head of a hotel staffer. In the melee, the owner contacted his cousin, Lakhan Sukheja, who rushed to the hotel with Mulchandani.

Sukheja and Mulchandani intervened, with the latter managing to nab one of the six men. Another suspect had been nabbed by the hotel staffers. The assailants, who had fled the spot in a multi-utility vehicle, returned to the spot and dragged Mulchandani into it.

The police said Qureshi had assaulted Mulchandani with sharp weapons inside the vehicle, while his accomplices told Sukheja to release their accomplice if they wanted his cousin to be freed. The assailants then dumped Mulchandani and later threw him at an isolated spot behind the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) building and fled.

The police had arrested three criminals — Akshay Bhosale (25), Yogesh Tonape (30) and Arbaz Shaikh (20) — on their records and detained two of their minor accomplices. Qureshi, who had 22 cases against him with the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad police, was on the run since then.

Crime branch senior inspector Balaji Sontakke received a tip-off that Qureshi was hiding in Kalyan. Following this, a police team went to Kalyan, stayed there for two days and collected information about Qureshi. “We took him into custody from a slum in the Suchakanaka area of Kalyan. Qureshi had taken a room on rent in the slums,” Sonatakke said.


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