Alert passengers on Churchgate local caught a man trying to offload a strolley carrying a corpse into the Naigaon creek on Thursday night, local media reported.
Commuters on the 9pm Virar-Churchgate local were in for a spine-chilling experience. It started with a man, seen struggling with a large, curiously filled-out strolley, and ultimately throwing it off the train somewhere between Naigaon and Bhayander.
Something about the shape of the bag (a red strolley), and his movements, struck the alert commuters as odd, and they immediately cornered him.
Though he tried his best to convince them that it was merely a strolley stuffed with discarded religious items, they handed him over to the Andheri Railway Police.
It turned out that the man – 31-year-old Deepak Amar Burman – had allegedly murdered his friend, stuffed the body in a strolley and had tried to dispose it from the moving train. He was unsuccessful in the first attempt as the train was too crowded, but managed it the second time round. The murder, police say, had been provoked over a petty dispute over a Rs 500 debt.
N H Sheikh, senior inspector of Andheri railway police station pieced together the story behind the incident. According to his statement, Deepak Amar Burman, is a small-time jewellery designer. Three months ago he had borrowed Rs 5,000 from his friend Mohan Jagtap, a resident of Sher-E-Punjab, Andheri, but was unable to return it. "Burman had agreed to return Rs 4,500, but Jagtap insisted he
return the entire amount. An angryBurman allegedly took Jagtap to an isolated place near Takshila (Andheri East, MIDC) and strangulated him.
Later, he went to the Jogeshwari station and bought a strolley for Rs 450, stuffed Jagtap's body in it and planned to throw it in a creek,” said Sheikh.
But Burman's plan failed in the first attempt. He boarded a 7 pm Virar local from Jogeshwari, with the heavy strolley and tried to throw it out at Nallasopara, but the crowd made it impossible for him to do so. After reaching Virar he boarded another train for Churchgate and near Naigoan he threw the strolley out. But his luck ran out when his fellow commuters spotted him.
“Among the passengers who had cornered him, was railway employee Nishant Kumar, who brought Burman to us. The strolley with the body has also been recovered from the tracks.
The victim's hands were tied up and he had obviously been strangulated,” said Sheikh. “On questioning Burman, we found that he had killed his friend Mohan Jagtap, a resident of Sher-E-Punjab in Andheri East,” said Sheikh.
Burman has booked under IPC 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) and is in police custody.
