MUMBAI: It is 1.10pm Wednesday. As a muezzin at a nearby mosque calls for ‘zohar’ or afternoon prayers, Mohammed Sharaf alias Kallu allows himself a brief break. Soon, he’s back to work and fishes out two more polythene bags containing the body parts of musician Bennett Rebello.

Rebello, 59, was killed on November 26, and his body chopped and the parts dumped into the

. A 19-year-old girl adopted by the musician and her minor boyfriend have been arrested for the murder.

After spending five hours in a makeshift boat in the polluted Mithi River, 40-year-old Kallu takes a quick shower and sits downs with his wife and three children for lunch.

Around 3pm, he is ready to start his search for Bennett’s head and torso. “In the past four days, I have fished out three bags containing Bennett’s body parts. I have covered almost 80% of the river and I doubt the head and torso were dumped here,” Kallu said. Dressed in shorts and a Tshirt and armed with a stick and a 10 metre-long bamboo, he sails in a crude boat which he has crafted himself.

When he is not searching for bodies in the Mithi, Kallu drives a hearse ambulance. “There is no fixed income. The policemen or Fire Brigade officials give me whatever they feel like,” he said.

It all started when Kallu, who hails from West

, landed in

at the age of 20 in search of a driver’s job. He was asked to help remove the body of a BEST conductor who had been killed.

“I went inside the polluted nullah and helped remove the body. Later, I removed another body for Kurla police. This is how I ended up being called for such work,” he recalled.

“I had a driving licence, but fate had something else in store for me,” he adds.

Police say during the 2005 deluge, they turned to Kallu to extricate bodies washed away in the flood waters.

Kallu, who claims he has removed 100 bodies from the Mithi River in the past two decades, has a suggestion for the authorities. “The government should put a net so that solid waste, including the bodies of humans and animals, are not washed away into the sea.”