Two arrested in Thane jeweller murder case

THANE: The Naupada police, on Saturday, arrested two accused, including a fleet cab driver, in connection with the alleged abduction and murder of Thanebased jeweller, Bharat Jain, 40, whose body was found in the Retibunder creek on Friday.

Police inspector, Ravindra Kshirsagar of Naupada police station, said that motive behind the murder seems to have been robbery as around 1.5kg of silver jewellery from Jain’s store was recovered from the accused.

Naupada police said that out of the two held, whose names have been withheld pending some more arrests, one is an Ola Cab driver from Kalyan and the other is Jain’s acquaintance from Ghansoli in Navi Mumbai. The police have also sent teams to Coimbatore and Uttar Pradesh on the trail of two more accused.

The police said that footage from a CCTV camera near Jain’s jewellery store provided the first clue. “The footage showed three men walking with Jain towards a waiting vehicle and Jain’s lack of resistance indicated that he knew at least some of the men. We started studying Call Detail Records to find out if cellular location mapping put any of Jain’s acquaintances in his vicinity on August 14,” an officer said.

Simultaneously, the CCTV footage indicated that the vehicle that Jain and the trio were getting into was a fleet cab vehicle. The police made inquiries with all major fleet cab operators to find out if any of them had picked up a fare or made a stop near Jain’s store. This led the police to the first arrested accused, who drives a Ola cab.

Based on his interrogation, the police arrested the second accused, who was known to Jain.

“According to inquiries so far, the accused seem to have murdered him in the cab itself, after which they dumped his body in the Kalwa creek at around 1.30am on August 15. From there, it floated to the spot where it was spotted and pulled out on Friday,” Kshirsagar said.

The police have not revealed how Jain was killed.

Jain, a resident of the Neelkanth Society near the Makhmali Talao in Thane, had left his residence on August 14, telling his family that he was going to his jewellery store, and never returned home. His family registered a Missing Person’s Complaint on August 15, and an FIR of kidnapping was registered.