A tussle over an empty seat turned fatal when 18-year-old Sagar Dogle, a resident of Kasara, was ruthlessly beaten up, thrown out of a speeding local and left to die. Late on Sunday night the four accused, who threw Sagar out, were nabbed. The accused claimed they had no idea that their rage had killed Sagar, reports Mumbai Mirror.
The drama began on Friday, when Sagar was travelling with his brother-in-law, Sanjay Pimplekar (29) to Thane. The duo boarded the 6.40 am local to get to their workplace in Thane. “At around 7.30 am as the train reached Khadavli station, a man walked in and asked Sagar to get up. This led to a small altercation between the two. Fortunately elders in the train intervened and stopped the fight,” recalled Sanjay.
Both Sanjay and Sagar forgot about the incident and were headed to work on Saturday morning in the same train.
Unaware of the fact that the man Avinash Shelar, 27, was enraged by the incident, and plotting his vengeance. Shelar boarded the train again from Khadavli on Saturday morning, this time accompanied by three well-built men.
“The men walked up to us and started hitting us. While two of them pounced on me and pinned me to the floor between the seats, the other two grabbed Sagar by his collar and took him to the passage,” said Sanjay. For the next few minutes, till the train reached Titwala, the men kept hitting Sanjay.
“When the men got off at Titwala I tried looking for Sagar but could not find him. I kept changing compartments till Thane thinking that Sagar had managed to board some compartment out of fear. It was only at Thane that one of commuters who had boarded with us at Kasara told me that Sagar had been thrown off between Khadavli and Titwala,” said a sobbing Sanjay.
Sanjay came back to Khadavli and walked to the spot, only to find cops surrounding his brother-in-law's body. The cops had arrived a good half an hour earlier after motorman of Nashik-bound Tapovan Express spotted the body and informed the station master at Khadavli on his walkie-talkie. The station master in turn informed Kalyan GRP.
Initially police registered a case of accidental death assuming that Sagar had fallen off. A panic-stricken Sanjay did not utter a single word about the attack. It was only late on Saturday night that he informed the cops about the incident.
Based on Sanjay's information, cops formed teams to track the accused. “All we knew was that the boys were well built and that one of them was called Kapil. No other witnesses were willing to come forward except Sanjay,” said Suresh Pednekar, sub-inspector at Kalyan GRP.
By late Sunday night the cops managed to establish the identity of the four accused and arrested all of them. The accused have been identified as Avinash Shelar, Kapil Shelke, 30, Ganesh Shelar, 19, and Narayan Jadhav (50). While Avinash and Kapil are graduates from well-to-do families, Ganesh is a SSC student and Narayan, a plumber.
All the accused, according to police, are members of a Khadavli gymnasium. “After Friday's altercation, Avinash's ego was hurt and he decided to teach Sagar and Sanjay a lesson. He sought help from his gym buddies, who planned and executed the attack on Saturday,” said Pednekar.
During the course of interrogation, the accused told the police that they did not intend to kill anybody. “They just wanted to beat up the duo but in the heat of the moment ended up crossing the line. In fact the boys claim that they weren't aware that Sagar had died,” added Pednekar.
The four accused have been charged for assault, conspiracy, rioting and culpable homicide under IPC. On Monday the accused were produced before railway court and remanded to magisterial custody. Meanwhile, Saagar's body had been cremated by his parents at Nashik.
Kalyan Govt Railway Police had just two clues - that the attackers were well built and that one of them was Kapil. On Sunday, plainclothes cops boarded the 6.40 am local from Kasara with Sanjay. Soon, some of the regular passengers started talking about the incident. The cops prodded the commuters to find out if anyone of them knew anything about the attackers.
“We behaved like commuters. While talking one of the men said how he recognised one of the attackers as Kapil from a particular area in Khadavli,” said Pednekar. The cops got off at Khadavli and traced Kapil, who had left for work. When he returned home in the evening, he was arrested. Within minutes of being arrested he divulged names of other three.
There have been several cases of commuters being pushed off trains in Mumbai in the recent past. Dilip Kalu Salat (30), was thrown off Pune Baroda Verawal Express in September 2009. Salat was travelling with his wife Mala,and other family members when three men sitting on the other started teasing them and an altercation followed.
On October 2008, Dharam Dev, 25, a resident of Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh, was beaten up on a local train by fellow commuters who allegedly humiliated him and his three friends after learning that they were 'bhaiyyas'.
In October 2006, Anant Chavan was pushed off a moving train by father son duo, Pandurang Aghavane and Kishore Aghavane, between Mahim and Matunga stations.
