Boy abducted for ransom, killed, chopped into pieces

TNN

KALYAN, April 28, 2014 : The body of a 12-year-old boy was found in pieces in a nullah close to the APMC flower market in Kalyan (West) on Sunday morning. Rohan Gucchait, a Class VII student of All Saints High School, Bhiwandi, was kidnapped ten days ago by an electrician who was in the employment of his father, a jeweller. On April 18, a day after his kidnapping, Rohan was strangled and his body chopped with an electric saw when his abductor, Ishtiyaq Sayyed Shaikh, learned that his parents had registered a police complaint.

On April 6, Rohan’s father, Uttam, received a call where a demand of Rs 50 lakh was made, but took it lightly. After that, Shaikh prepared a plan to kidnap the boy for ransom and studied his and his family’s movements for 11 days. On April 17, Shaikh, arrived at Rohan’s housing society, Sundar Nagar Complex, on a motorbike around 11am. He called the boy, telling him he was wanted at his father’s shop. They left the society within half an hour and waited close to a nearby flour mill, where Shaikh received confirmation from his accomplices about their readiness. At 12.10pm, a CCTV camera at the gate of a school captured Shaikh passing by with Rohan riding pillion. About two hours later, the two stepped into a sports shop, where Shaikh bought a cricket bat for Rs 1,400 and told Rohan to check it outside the shop. Meanwhile, Shaikh’s accomplices, numbering four, waited in a steel grey Maruti 800 parked close to an electrical goods shop. The five men put the boy in the car around 2.30pm and drove off.

 

Around the same time, Rohan’s father had returned home from his shop for lunch and started enquiring about his son’s whereabouts. At 4pm, after searching the entire locality, he, along with friends and relatives, went to the Bazaarpeth police station to lodge a missing case. The police registered the case at 11pm. At 1pm the next day, Rohan’s parents, at the police station at the time, got a call from one of Shaikh’s accomplices, who demanded Rs 50 lakh for the release of their son. The caller warned them against lodging a police complaint.

Shaikh, since he was known to the family, easily came to know about the police complaint. The same night, he and his accomplices killed the boy and dumped his body parts at three locations, all within a 50-100-metre radius of the flower market.

Between April 21 and 25, the police found the boy’s legs, but didn’t connect the finding with the missing case. Also in this duration, the accused called Rohan’s parents twice for ransom. When his mother asked the callers to make him speak with her, they cut the call.

During their investigation, the police learned that Shaikh had stopped visiting the Gucchait residence. On April 26, based on inputs by informers, Shaikh’s call records and CCTV footage, the police nabbed him and his accomplices from different places in Kalyan (West). Shaikh gave in to questioning and confessed to the crime. At 3am on Sunday, April 27, he led the police to the nullah, where the boy’s head and torso had been dumped.

Shaikh also took the police to his brother-in-law’s flat in Sarvodaya Park, near the APMC flower market in Kalyan (West), where Rohan was kept and then killed. The building’s CCTV footage of April 17 shows the boy holding Shaikh’s helmet and taking the stairs to the first-floor flat.

Macabre crime

On April 17, Rohan Gucchait (12), a Class VII student, was kidnapped by an electrician employed by his jeweller father

An accomplice called up with ransom demand of Rs 50 lakh, warned family not to go to police

When main accused learned of police complaint the next day, strangled Rohan and cut his body with an electric saw

Dumped body parts in a nullah in APMC flower market in Kalyan

Police zero in on electrician as he fails to report to work, nab him and 5 accomplices