How used gauze helped police nail Kurar killer

Aslam Shaikh

A used piece of gauze from the killer's forehead that fell at the spot where he had murdered a man helped the Kurar police solve the crime within hours. An alert local had called the police control room after spotting the body of Aslam Shaikh, 35, in Kurar on Saturday morning. A Kurar police team reached the spot and cordoned off the area. Shaikh was rushed to Siddharth hospital where doctors declared him brought dead. Shaikh's head had been hit by a blunt object and the killer had later strangulated him with a nylon rope. The investigating team recovered the rope, used gauze, an empty syringe and white powder, suspected to be mephedrone or meow meow, near the body.

While conducting a panchnama, zonal Deputy Commission of Police Dr Vinaykumar Rathod noticed the gauze or dressing pad near the body. "Initially, it looked like the deceased was a housebreaker who fell from the nearby building. But, my line of investigation changed when I saw the used gauze. There was no injury mark on Shaikh's body to indicate that it was his, so it could have been the killer's," DCP Rathod told mid-day.

The investigating team then scrutinised CCTV footage of the spot, which revealed the deceased and a teenaged-boy had got into a fight after having drugs. While the face was not clear, the teenager's body language suddenly clicked in DCP Rathod's mind, who asked the team to round up the people present during the panchnama. Noor Mohammad Shakiullah Shaikh, 19, was eventually arrested. Interestingly, the killer was helping the cops collect evidence from the crime spot. "Initially, he denied his role but after sustained grilling, he confessed. There was minor burn on his forehead for which he had used a dressing pad," DCP Rathod said. The Kurar police have booked Noor Shaikh under relevant sections of the IPC.

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