Virar murder: Who is Pinto Sharma? Calm Buddha or master of hell?

On a Wednesday afternoon a narrow lane near Vakola market appears deep in postlunch slumber The quietude is unnerving given that this neighbourhood is home to an alleged murderer Its here that stock trader Pintoo Sharma 42 lived for close to 25 years before he was arrested on January 22 for the murder of Ganesh Koladkar 58 a resident of Mira Road who ran a printing pressThe Arnala Coastal police allege that Sharmas evil act included cutting up Koladkars body with a hacksaw to separate flesh from bones before he flushed parts of it down the toilet and flung the bones and skull into the Bhayander creekPintoo SharmaThe police are looking into a possible dispute over money A few months into knowing him Sharma a share broker lent Koladkar Rs 1 lakh and managed to receive Rs 40000 back Koladkar kept him hanging for the remainder When Sharma invited him on January 16 to a rented apartment on the sixth floor of Bachraj Paradise in Global City Virar West he petitioned him to clear the loan but Koladkar said he needed the money to get married A jibe about his age annoyed Koladkar who prepared to leave and when Sharma tried to stop him he fell and hit his head against the floorGanesh KoladkarTo rid the evidence of death in his home Sharma told the police he hatched a spontaneous plan to dispose of the body The police however are unsure whether the murder was planned and Sharma had invited Koladkar with the intention of teaching him a lesson Sharma is believed to have returned to this Virar home over the next few days to dispose of the remains and would have gone untraced had residents of Bachraj not complained of a chocked pipeline leading sanitation workers to the septic tank where they found bits of flesh Yet this gruesome act is not one that his Vakola neighbours would have associated with Sharma If anything theyd put him on the opposite end of the spectrumUnwilling to reveal his name a neighbour says he knows little about the Sharmas wife Purnima and two sons aged 11 and 17 who live in a first floor room Aside from pleasantries they never interacted with us Their children also do not come downstairs to play with our kids We do not know what profession Sharma is into but he never had any dispute with the neighbours Another adds Sometimes wed get annoyed if his motorcycle was parked in the way in the compound Wed ring his doorbell lose our cool but hed never retort or get aggressive Instead he would bring the motorcycle keys shift the vehicle and quietly go back home without uttering a wordThe locked door to Pintoo Sharmas home in Vakola His wife and children were at the home but refused to speak to midday PicDatta Kumbhar right An official carries a bag with remains of flesh believed to be Koladkars found from the Virar buildings septic tank PicHanif PatelNews for crimeIn police custody for over 10 days Sharma is also being interrogated for another case that of Arvind Ranade an LIC development officer a resident of IC Colony in Borivli who went missing on February 21 2018 and is suspected to have met the same fate as Koladkar at a Naigaon flat that Sharma rented After Ranades relatives heard of Koladkars case they approached the Valiv policeThe police claim that Sharmas morning ritual involved scanning English newspapers for crime stories and that he held particular interest in the murder of API Ashwini BidreGore who the police allege was hacked to death by her lover and fellow policeman Abhay Kurundkar in 2017 and whose body is yet to be tracedThe neighbourhood where Pintoo Sharma lived in a chawl with his wife and two children PicDatta KumbharIn the past they allege he also watched online videos on how the British tortured Indians and tricks to face thirddegree torture while in police custody They say he has tried his best to deflect efforts of a psychiatrist who was brought in for custodial interrogation Yaar tum dande maar lo lekin psychiatrist ko bolo yahan se chala jaye he is believed to have told the policeThe son of a BMC employee Sharma says the police has a diploma that qualifies him to be a Sanitary Inspector from the All India Institute of Local Self Government Barfiwala Road Andheri West That he has a certification course in Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body from University of Mumbai is already known He pursued these courses not to better hack a human body but to land a job in the BMC like his father Sharma was also pursuing a course in Phonology from the universityPolice speak to neighbours at Bachraj paradise Virar where Koladkar was allegedly murdered by SharmaHe has a sharp mind and does not get easily disturbed Calculative while talking he evaluates each word before speaking He seems to have sound knowledge of share trading and says he can make between Rs 25000 and Rs 30000 per month says an officer privy to the investigation adding that the suspect is eager to teach cops share market tricksWhat has stumped the police is that Sharma doesnt have a social media account While he is known to have two cell phones a basic handset and a smartphone the police are yet to recover the smartphoneChances of misdirectionThe police claim Sharma who met Koladkar at the latters Mira Road printing press a year ago created a fake account in the name of Vanita Agarwal on a matrimonial site to chat with the deceased The intention says the accused was to prank Koladkar But cops are taking all of Sharmas statements with a pinch of salt They say it has been tough interrogating him as he often tries to derail them in conversation When nothing else works the police admit get harsh with him but midway Sharma says Okay Stop If you beat me I wont utter a word He has no remorse for what he has done with Koladkar and the body an officer says adding He is willing to confess to his crime in courtAnother police officialadds He never gives us straight answers They are predecided It seems he has intended not to reveal the actual reason behind the Koladkars brutal murderWhen I opened his Koladkars chest I saw a thick accumulation of fat around his heart I am sure he would have died in the next couple of years because his heart could not have been functioning well Sharma is said to have told the interrogators describing how he carved the body in what they believe was a deviation tactic When asked if he was afraid while cutting the mortal remains he is believed to have said At that time I had become a motor who followed the commands of my brainA family manSharma has shown no remorse for the act Not even when retelling the most gory bits of how he beheaded Koladkar not knowing whether his victim was unconscious or dead or even the details of how he chopped up his body into chunks in order to flush them down the toilet But his family has had an entirely different effect on himSharma has told the police that he fell in love with Purnima when he was just 14 years old Purnima was a distant relative who lived in the same neighbourhood and the two got married when Sharma turned 24 He never looked at other girls one officer says he told them Aside from Purnima who visited the police station once to hand him a few change of clothes no relative has visited SharmaTwo days after Sharmas arrest Purnima reached the Arnala Coastal police station with her lawyers visiting card wanting the contact number of the owner of the flat in Virar where the incident took place says a source who added that she has not visited Sharma after this day not even when he was produced in court But it is familial bonds alone that manage to reduce Sharma to tearsPolice say he cried once inside custody when his sons did not visit the police station to meet him Sharmas father Jaikishan married a second time after his first wife whose son Sharma is died The police believe that the denial of paternal love during childhood could have affected his behaviour Yet he told the police If my father had been caught in a case like this I would have been camping at the police station to see him every day But my sons have not bothered to visit me After saying this he burst into tears the police official says Sharma is expected to be produced in Vasai court today with the police demanding an extension of custodyCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates