Real time location tracking, speedy mobilisation of personnel and the presence of mind shown by a team from the Dindoshi police station enabled the detection of a murder case within 24 hours of it being reported.
According to the Dindoshi police, they received a call on Thursday morning from Pramod Maurya, a resident of the Santosh Nagar area in Goregaon, who informed them that his neighbour Rosie Khatoon (27), a housemaid by profession, had been murdered. Maurya added that Rosie's husband Ansar Ali (29), a tanker driver, was nowhere to be found, and that he had called Rosie's sister Julie earlier that morning to say that he had killed Rosie.
A team was rushed to the house and based on circumstantial evidence, including strangulation marks on Rosie's throat, a case of murder was registered.
Even as the paperwork was underway, the investigating team started scanning CCTV camera footage from around the building where Rosie and Ali were staying, and tracking his movements.
“CCTV showed him going to the Goregaon railway station several hours earlier, which indicated that he had taken a train. However, his intended destination was not known to us. We then checked his cellular location, which showed him to be on the move at a high speed. Based on his movements, we inferred that he was still on a train. Meanwhile, another team learned that he hailed from Madhupur near Prayagraj,” an officer who was part of the investigation said.
Working on the assumption that Ali was headed to Madhupur, the police obtained timings and routes of all express train bound for Uttar Pradesh, and compared them with Ali's current movements. After nearly an hour's work, the police concluded that he was on the Chhapra Godan Express, which leaves from the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus and terminates at Chhapra.
"We contacted the railway police at all the stations where the train halted but the halts were too short for them to conduct a proper search. Simultaneously, we rushed two team to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport and sent them to Prayagraj via flight, as Madhupur is close to Prayagraj. The team sped from the Prayagraj airport to the railway station and got there before the train," Deputy Commissioner of Police Somnath Gharge, Zone XI said.
As soon as the train reached the station, one of the two teams boarded the train while the other team fanned out on the station to check out all the people alighting. However, even after the train left the station, there was no sign of Ali either on the train or the platform. The team that had boarded the train decided to stay on.
"It was during this time that the team realised that one of the toilets in the train had been constantly occupied ever since they had boarded. Smelling a rat, our personnel started knocking on the door and kept knocking till the door was opened. True to their suspicion, Ali was hiding inside," Gharge said
Ali was subsequently brought to Mumbai on Friday and placed under arrest. He was charged with murder under the Indian Penal Code, and, after being produced in court, was remanded in police custody till June 3.
"Ali has said in his interrogation that he would frequently suspect Rosie of infidelity, and this would lead to constant arguments between them. One such fight erupted on Thursday morning, and Ali strangled her to death," said Gharge.
Ali's interrogation has revealed that he murdered Rosie in the early hours of Thursday morning and caught the first train he saw at Goregaon. He then went to Kasara, from where he caught the express train.
