Four people including the mastermind have been arrested by the police

The mutilated body of a 12-year-old boy who was killed by his kidnappers for ransom was found by the police on Friday night. The body pieces were found dumped in plastic gunny bags thrown in a drain near APMC market in Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai.

Four people including the mastermind have been arrested by the police. The victim identified as Rohan Gucchait, was a resident of Sundar Nagar Complex in Kalyan, went missing on April 17th morning. According to the police, the mastermind, Ishtiyaq Shaikh, an electrician, was known to the victim's father, Uttam and had worked at his jewellery shop in South Mumbai and also at their residence in Kalyan .

On April 17th, around 11 am when the victim returned from school, Shaikh stopped him at his building's gate and told Rohan that his father had summoned him to his shop. Shaikh told him that he will drop him and asked him to sit on his bike. Around 2 pm, the accused was joined by his accomplice who put him in their car, a Maruti 800 and drove off. The victim was then taken to Shaikh's brother-in-law’s flat in Sarvodaya Park, near the APMC flower market in Kalyan (West), where he was held captive for a day and later killed. The three accomplices have been identified as - Nilesh Salve, Ganesh Patil, and Imtiyaz Abdul.

On the same day Shaikh learnt that the victim’s father had lodged a police complaint. The next day, Shaikh and his three accomplices strangled the victim to death and later chopped off his body into three halves with the help of an electric hacksaw. They then put the pieces in plastic gunny bags and dumped his mutilated body at different locations in a drain near the APMC flower market, all within the range of 500 meters.

The accused then called the father and demanded a ransom of Rs.50 lakh. “The main accused had made a hoax ransom call to Rohan's father a fortnight ago but he did not pay any heed to it. He then watched the victim's movement and hatched a kidnapping plan,” a police officer privy to the case told The Hindu.

“He then took the help of three accomplices for kidnapping and later even murdering the victim and in disposing off his body,” the source added.

The police cracked the case based on the sketch prepared with the help of CCTV footage and also after studying Shaikh's call data records. The police have also recovered the CCTV footage of the building where the victim was held captive. Rohan's mutilated body was found between 25th and 26th April.

The accused have been arrested on the charges of kidnapping, murder, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence.