28 April,2014 08:35 AM IST | | Vinay dalvi
Five days after cops found the 12-year-old's legs in a drain near the Kalyan APMC market, his body was discovered 100 metres from the spot; neighbours blame police apathy for failure to act in time
Kalyan nullah
A jeweller's 12-year-old son, who was kidnapped from his well-heeled residential society in Kalyan, was found dead on Sunday morning. The residents have accused the cops of being negligent, claiming that they were too involved with election duty to pay attention to the kidnapping case.
| Rohan Uttambhai Ghuchait (12). Pic/Abhijit Deshmukh |
Rohan Uttambhai Ghuchait (12), who lived at Sundernagar complex in Kalyan (West), had gone missing from his building on April 17 while he was playing on the premises. The family had lodged a missing complaint.
But in the evening the same day, Rohan's father Uttambhai, who runs a jewellery design shop in Kalyan's commercial area of Bazaarpeth, received a ransom call demanding R50 lakh. A kidnapping case was then registered by cops.
"None of them (police) took the case seriously. We approached them with everything, right from the CCTV footage from the area to an eyewitness who saw the boy being taken away on a bike.
We also gave them the bike's number, but the senior inspector, Mr N M Tayde of Bazaarpeth police, did not give a hoot. He told us he would inform us if the boy was found, and asked us to leave because he was busy with election duty," said Dinesh Deshmukh, a neighbour of the Ghuchaits.
On April 21, however, the boy's legs were found in a nullah near the APMC market in Kalyan. On Sunday morning, the rest of his body was found 100 metres from the spot.
Copspeak
"We have arrested four people in the case," said Sanjay Jadhav, deputy commissioner of police, Kalyan. The police claimed that the accused had made the ransom call from a phone booth opposite Fortis Hospital.
They have the CCTV footage of the spot, on the basis of which the arrests were made, they said. The suspects have been identified as Nilesh Salve, Ishaq Sayed Shaikh, Imitiyaz Abdul Sattar and Ganesh Patil.
Officials said Salve used to work as an electrician in the Uttambhai's office, and knew his routine well. To make some easy money, he got together with the other three and kidnapped Rohan, a Std VI student of the All Saints School in Bhiwandi. But later, the four men got scared that the boy might lead cops to them and chopped up his body at a flat in Sarvodaya Nagar area.
