A year on, three friends arrested for man's murder

Police today claimed to have cracked the murder case of a 34-year-old man, whose highly decomposed body was recovered from a drain at suburban Kanjurmarg, with the arrest of three persons.
The accused, identified as bus drivers Babloo Singh (32) and Sushil Kurade (27) and Riyaz Ahemad Ansari (34), an auto rickshaw driver.
On May 16 last year, Kanjurmarg police had found a man's decomposed body with brutal head injuries, in a drain on Eastern Express Highway (Mumbai-Thane Road).
The Crime branch, which was also conducting parallel investigation, had a few weeks back identified the body as of Shivanand Pujari (34), a resident of Andheri. He was a habitual drunkard and a petty thief.

"A missing person's complaint was registered at MIDC police station last year by Shivanand's family after he went missing," a Crime Branch officer said.
According to the officer, the accused knew Pujari since long. He used to steal tape recorders and other tools from their vehicles to meet his expenditure.

On May 12, the accused and the victim had drinks together in Babloo's bus. A sudden quarrel erupted between the accused and Shivanand over stealing of their vehicle equipments, police said.
The accused then drove him to Eastern Express Highway in the bus and murdered him with a heavy object before dumping his body in a nearby drain, police said.

All the accused were arrested and handed over to Kanjurmarg police, the crime branch officer said.