Mumbai Crime: Murder accused arrested after 29 years had lived as tantriks

The crime branch team that arrested the duo

For the past 29 years, the two men recently arrested for the murders of a woman and her four children in Mira Road in 1994, had continuously changed their names and addresses in an attempt to evade arrest. They had finally settled in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, pretending to be tantriks. The Mira Road Crime Branch, with the assistance of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF), apprehended them after the police pretended to seek advice from the tantriks and detained them on Sunday.

In December 2022, the police had arrested Rajkumar Amarnath Chauhan, 45, in the same case, upon his arrival in Mumbai from Qatar, where he had been working since 2007. Chauhan and the arrested duo, Anil Saroj and Sunil Saroj, were neighbours of Rajnarayan Prajapati, who worked at a rationing shop. Rajnarayan lived with his wife Jagrani and their children Pramod, Pinky, Pintu, and an infant, in Mira Road.

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The crime

On November 16, 1994, the two men had a confrontation with the Prajapati family. The dispute originated when Pinky accidentally broke the handle of one of the men's suitcases while playing. The altercation escalated and Prajapati threatened to involve the police. The following day, when Prajapati returned home for lunch, he discovered the door was locked from outside, and heard faint cries coming from inside the house. He peeped in from the window and saw his wife and kids lying in a pool of blood. With the help of locals, he broke the lock and entered while his wife was breathing her last. He rushed to the police.

Sunil Saroj and (right) Anil Saroj, the arrested accused, were staying in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh. Pics/Hanif Patel

The police revealed that the accused had engaged in altercations with the Prajapati family earlier over trivial matters. However, on November 16, the three accused decided to take a drastic step and kill the entire family to teach Prajapati a lesson. Subsequently, they concealed their blood-stained clothes and the murder weapon in their house before fleeing the city. The Kashimira police suspected the involvement of the three men. But the case went cold. It was only last year, after the Thane Rural police had been bifurcated to form the MBVV Commissionerate, that the crime branch reopened the investigation. Prajapati died in 2007.

Undercover op

"We had photographs of the accused when they were 21 years old, but after 29 years, their appearances were a mystery," said Avinash Ambure, deputy commissioner of police (Crime Branch) MBVV. On receiving a tip-off from STF that Anil and Sunil were residing in Jaunpur under the names Vijay and Sanjay as tantriks, crime branch officers went to Uttar Pradesh. They approached the tantriks as individuals in need, and took their photographs. "After comparing the two sets of photos, we established that Vijay and Sanjay were indeed the accused Anil and Sunil," added Ambure. Subsequently, the police arrested the two men and brought them to Mumbai on Sunday to face charges for the murders they committed in 1994.