Investigations into the murder case of MiD DAY journalist J Dey began just a few hours after his killing, when sleuths began combing the scene of crime in Powai for clues. In the days that followed the murder, they scoured Dey’s email account, his phone records, interrogated hundreds of acquaintances, eyewitnesses, informants and operators. They gathered CCTV footage from the store outside which Dey had been slain, and obtained sketches of suspects based on eyewitness accounts.

A fortnight later, they arrested seven men who were scattered across the country — all had been directly involved in the shooting. Senior Inspector Arun Chavan, who was in charge of the property cell at the time, acquired the initial clues for these busts. Chavan said, “Through our informer network, we were told that these men had gone missing after the shooting. After verifying if they were indeed absconding, we probed further and traced their location.”