Having cracked the sensational murder of a 20-year-old upcoming model in just over four hours, the city police have arrested a 19-year-old college student for allegedly killing her, packing her body in a large travel bag and dumping it in a bush near at Malad in north Mumbai.
The boy, identified as one Muzzamil Sayyed, who was arrested late on Monday evening, was on Tuesday produced before a suburban court which remanded him in police custody till October 22.
Acting on a tip-off from a taxi driver that an youngster had dumped the large travel bag in a bush in an isolated Mindspace locality at Malad (west) in a suspicious manner, a team of police officials formed by Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-XI) Sangramsinh Nishal rushed to the spot and found the body of a deceased model inside the bag.
Sayyed, the accused boy who hails from Hyderabad and used to stay in a rented flat in Mumbai, had packed the model’s body carefully inside a bed sheet with the face of the deceased strapped with a rope and the body wrapped in cushion.
After examining the CCTV footage obtained from the area which showed the boy coming out of the taxi and dumping the travel bag in a bush, the investigating team used the mobile number of the boy given by the taxi driver to track down the accused boy whom they arrested shortly before midnight of Monday.
Police identified the murdered girl as one Mansi Dixit, who hailed from Kota in Rajasthan. She had visited Sayyed’s Millat Nagar residence at Andheri (west) in north Mumbai on Monday night.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-11) SP Nishandar said that Mansi had come to Mumbai to try her luck in Bollywood and living in a rented flat at Andheri. She used to take small modelling assignments and had managed to get bit of roles in some films. Mansi had come in contact with Sayyed through social media.
During the questioning after his arrest, Sayyed reportedly admitted to the police that after a tiff, he had hit Mansi on her head with an iron stool leading to her death. However, the investigators are not ruling out the possibility of Sayyed having strangled Mansi to death.
Two versions were making rounds as to the circumstances leading to Sayyed hitting Mansi with an iron stool. While one version said that Sayyed and Mansi had known each other for some time, the tiff between them was genuine one and the death was accidental, the second version was that Mansi used to work as an “escort” whom Sayyed had hired her by making an online payment.
However, according to the second version, the dispute arose between them after the model demanded an additional payment of Rs 2,500 when she landed at Sayyed’s residence on Monday afternoon, a demand that enraged the boy leading to the incident. Sayyed allegedly strangled her to death. After packing Mansi’s body in a travel bag, Sayyed hired a taxi over phone on the pretext of going to the Mumbai International Airport. However, after reaching the secluded Mindspace locality where he dumped the bag in a bush and took an autorickshaw.
The taxi driver found the boy’s behaviour suspicious. After the boy left the place, the taxi driver called up the police control room at 100. The Bangur Nagar police immediately reached the spot and found the body of a girl inside the bag. Using the mobile number given by the taxi driver, the investigating team zeroed in on Sayyed.
“After disembarking from the taxi at Mindspace, he took an autorishaw. Trying to cover up his tracks, the boy got down from the autorickshaw and hired another cab. However, the mobile number registered by the boy with the cab service company helped us arrest the accused,” a senior police officer said.
Meanwhile, the police have sent the body of the murdered girl for post mortem. The arrested boy has been charged under sections 302 (murder) and 201 ( causing disappearance of evidence of giving false information to screen offender) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).