Man kills guard who foiled his robbery bid last month

Alert watchman had got the man arrested for trying to burgle flat at building last month; the accused, after securing bail, visited premise and battered him to death

A building security guard was killed in an apparent revenge attack at Pawar Heights Apartments, Hadapsar in the wee hours of yesterday.u00a0Residents of the building found the security guard, Ruben Kardak (60), lying in a pool of blood at the basement of the building, and alerted the Hadapsar police. Cops then within five hours tracked down the suspect, Pravin Salunke (23), and arrested him under section 302 (murder) of the IPC.

Tragic: 60-year-old security guard Ruben Kardak (inset) was bludgeoned to death in the building basement

According to the police, Kardak had nabbed Salunke while he was attempting to break into a locked flat atu00a0the building last month, following which police had arrested him.u00a0“On October 2, Salunke, who has a criminal record, had tried to break into a locked flat at the building. An alert Kardak caught him and with the help of other residents thrashed him and later handed him over to us,” said police inspector Raghunath Jadhav of Hadapsar police station.

After being in the lock up for three days, Salunke was released on bail. u00a0“On Tuesday night, Salunke came to the building where he met Kardak and both had a verbal argument. However, since there were people around, Salunke didn’t do anything but threatened the watchman he would get his revenge soon and left the place,” said Jadhav.

“Kardak then narrated the incident to the secretary of the building, and told him that Salunke had threatened him with dire consequences.” u00a0According to the police, at 1.30 am on Wednesday, when Kardak was asleep in the basement, the accused sneaked in and bludgeoned him to death and fled away from the spot.

Bhushan Pawar, police sub-inspector at Hadapsar police station, said, “The secretary informed us of the previous night’s episode, and thereafter we launched a man hunt to trace Salunke.”u00a0“We rushed to his residence in Kharadi, but he was not there. We then started tracking his mobile phone, which we had on our records, and we tracked him down to Hadapsar and arrested him in the afternoon,” said Pawar. u00a0“We have arrested him for murdering the security guard, and he will be produced in court today,” said Pawar.u00a0

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