MUMBAI: The Government Railway Police (GRP) in Mumbai yesterday arrested six people in connection with the murder of a migrant laborer Dharmdev Rai on a Mumbai-bound suburban train at Khopoli on Tuesday morning. All the accused were produced in a court in Kalyan yesterday afternoon which remanded them to police custody till Nov. 3.
Speaking to journalists about the incident, K.P. Raghuvanshi, the additional director general of police (Railways), said that the incident was not an issue between Marathi and non-Marathi people or a hate crime, but whatever happened was due to the spur of moment. Raghuvanshi denied that the arrested people had any political affiliation or party workers of Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
The GRP officials said that the primary investigations have revealed that the scuffle between the deceased and his friends and the accused was due to a trivial issue of occupying the window seats on the train. The Maharashtra government has also dispatched its report on the incident to the federal Home Ministry furnishing details and action taken.
Suspicion has also arisen now over the factual reasons of Rai’s death as no external injuries were found on his body, and police investigators were trying to find out whether the cause of death could be due to the assault or due to other health reasons of the deceased.
In another development that sent shockwaves in the Indian Army, the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra police yesterday swooped on the residence of a serving Indian Army officer Lt. Col. Purohit at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. The ATS officers were tightlipped over whether any indiscriminating documents were found during the raid.
According to ATS sources, the ATS had sought prior permission of the Indian Army to interrogate Purohit in connection with the Malegaon blasts that took place on Sept. 29 in which five people were killed. This was based on the interrogation of two former army officers Ramesh Upadhyaya and Sameer Kulkarni.
Meanwhile, a senior journalist from Uttar Pradesh was yesterday brutally beaten by MNS supporters here, police said. Dinanath Tiwari, 45, who works for the Nirbhay Pathik tabloid, had gone to Kurar village in the eastern suburb of Malad just after midnight to report on MNS workers abusing and attacking a settlement of people from north India.
When they saw him taking photographs, about 15 MNS activists, including the area’s municipal corporator Vanita Ghag, assaulted Tiwari, an eyewitness said. Tiwari was rushed to the Bhagwati Hospital with injuries to the ear and some fractures.
