Crime Branch cracks body-in-bag case after Kurla tailor leads them to house of Bennett Rebello, where his 19-year-old 'adopted daughter', after repeated questioning, breaks down and confesses to crime
Aaradhiya Patil, Bennett's 'adopted' daughter, was arrested along with her 16-year-old boyfriend on Saturday
A shirt piece helped the police trace the mysterious body parts found in a travelling bag on Mahim beach earlier this week, to city musician Bennett Rebello, 59, unravelling a gruesome plot, hatched by his adopted daughter for property. Following investigations, the police on Friday arrested Aaradhiya Patil, 19, and her 16-year-old boyfriend who had hatched a plan to kill him at his Vakola residence.
While she initially told the cops that her "father" was in Canada for a show, she could not withstand the questioning and confessed to have murdered the musician. Sources within the crime branch told mid-day that Patil and her boyfriend, took over three days to get rid of each of the body parts, and continued to stay at the Vakola home to avoid suspicion.
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How cops nailed accused
Apart from the body parts, the cops had also found two shirts, a pant and one maroon sweater inside the bag. All the articles were sent to Sion hospital's forensic department for further analysis. Meanwhile, Unit 5 of the Crime Branch initiated a parallel investigation of the case. Cops had found a tailor's badge on one of the two shirts. Coincidentally, the tailor's shop was right in front of Unit 5's office. While the tailor couldn't identify the client whose shirt it was, a manual search of all his bill books, helped the cops identify a bill in the name of one Bennett, which had a similar sample shirt piece, as the one found in the bag, stapled to it. "The deceased had visited our outlet in April this year, to stitch a pair of trousers and shirts," Afroze Ansari, the tailor at the outlet, told this paper.
The sweater found in the suitcase that was dumped in Mithi River with Bennett's body parts
A source from the crime branch said that they were finding it difficult to make any headway in the case, as they were many Bennetts registered in the electoral list. A team of cops then started checking Facebook profiles with the name Bennett, as there was no address or phone number on the bill. "During the search, we found a person by the name of Bennett Rebello, wearing a sweater, which was similar to that found inside the travelling bag. The crime branch decided to focus on this profile and screened more than 5,000 pictures posted by the person" added another officer.
"When we found the profile, we got a phone number, his visiting card and signature on one of the notes of a melody written by Bennett. This sign matched with the bill of the tailor," DCP (Detection) Shahaji Umap said. When it was established that Rebello could be the person whose body was found inside the bag, they started patrolling near the house in Vakola, based on the address on the visiting card. "We finally found a couple at the spot," Umap added.
The woman identified herself as Rebello's daughter and claimed that her father had gone to Canada for a show. "When our officials entered the house, they noticed some traces of blood on the edges of the walls. Following interrogation, she finally confessed to killing Rebello, with the help of her boyfriend," said another cop. According to Senior Police Inspector Jagdish Sail of Unit 5, Patil is a runaway child, and came to the city when she was 13 years old. She came in contact with Rebello one-and-a-half years ago. "He treated her like his adopted daughter," he said.
In her statement to the police, Patil said, "Papa ne kaha, marne ke baad unka property mera hoga." She told the cops that she killed Rebello in the early hours of November 27. The duo first hit him with a bamboo stick, and stabbed him with a knife. Since he was still alive, they used a pesticide spray on his face, until he stopped breathing. They then separated his lower and upper limb, which they wrapped in a plastic bag and put into a suitcase, dumping it in Mithi River. The next day, they separated the torso and the head, which was also dumped in Mithi. On the third night, they dumped another suitcase with the second limbs, which came floating to Mahim beach on December 2. "We will get the forensic experts to carry out a detailed inspection of the house. We also have to recover the remaining body parts and the head," a police officer said.
Family still in shock
Rebello had five siblings (two sisters and three brothers). He had worked in Muscat as a marketing executive for nearly three decades. After returning to India, he took up a career in music. He was a guitarist at Juhu Club Millennium, and even started his own company called M/s Fun and Music Enterprise in June that organised orchestras. He was staying alone in his ground plus one-storey house in Vakola and was a divorcee.
According to his younger brother J Rebello, he had met him on November 2, for an All Souls Day prayer meeting that was arranged at their 92-year-old father M Rebello's house in Kalina. "We didn't speak regularly, but I had no idea that my brother was missing, as his phone was mostly switched off. He would spend most of his time at our father's house. He owned properties in Mira Road and Goa, other than Vakola." When asked if he knew about any adopted daughter that his brother had, J Rebello, said that he had never heard about Patil, or hadn't even seen her in his house.
With inputs by Anurag Kamble
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