The accused and his worker found the corpses of the couple in a room; fearing arrest, they drove out to Lover's Point in Vasai and dumped them in the nullah
In a new twist to the case of the bodies that were fished out from a nullah near the Vasai-Nallasopara Road, the Manikpur police arrested the owner of a beach lodge and his employee for disposing the bodies.
In the net: Cops believe since the accused Ramesh Nijai had rented out the room without any documentation, he thought that if he informed the police, he might get arrested
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On August 14, MiD DAY reported how a call from a local had led the cops to the bodies of 22-year-old Joseph Prakash Salve and 21-year-old Priyanka Mohite (‘Two bodies fished out from Lovers point in Vasai’).
Their autopsies revealed that Salve was strangled to death while in addition to being strangled, a deep cut was also found on Mohite’s neck.
MiD DAY’s report on August 14
Breakthrough
During their course of investigations, the cops first went through the phone records of the deceased. “Through the records, we zeroed in on a few common friends, who told us that Salve and Mohite were in a relationship. But, they were having trouble as Salve had heard that Mohite was having an affair with another boy named Tyson,” said API Anand Bhoir from Manikpur’s detection team.
Bhoir added that when they found the bodies, they knew it was not possible that the boy had killed the girl and then strangled himself at the spot.
“It was obvious that their bodies had been dumped there,” said Bhoir.
Friends also told authorities that the two would often meet each other at lodges near Kalamb Beach in Vasai village. Officials started making rounds of the various lodges around the beach.
Finally, on Monday the cops came to know that the two had booked a room on August 12 at Maldiv farmhouse resort for two hours.
“When we visited the lodge and searched the rooms, we found blood stains in one of the rooms,” said Bhoir. On further questioning, the owner of the lodge Ramesh Nijai (52) confessed to the police that he had dumped the bodies of the couple at the Sun City road with the help of his employee Suraj Bahadur (20).
Nijai said that on August 12 when he found that the couple had not vacated the room till 8 pm he went to the room to ask them to vacate. However, his knocks on the door went unanswered. It was then that he peeped through the window and found the couple dead.
“Since Nijai had rented out the room without any documentation, he thought that if he informed the police, he might get arrested. To evade arrest, he and Bahadur lifted the bodies and put them in the back seat of his car and drove to Sun City Road, which is about half-an-hour away, and threw them in the drain there,” said Sangramsingh Nishandar, additional deputy superintendent of police (Vasai).
The police have arrested the two on the charge of disposing off the bodies.
“We are now finding out the route the two had taken that night to evade nakabandis and whether they were involved in killing the couple,” said an officer from the Manikpur police station.
The police, however, suspect that Salve might have carried out the crime, as he did not like Mohite meeting Tyson.
“It is possible that the two fought and in a fit of rage, he slashed her neck and then hanged himself,” added Nishandar. u00a0
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