In a gruesome incident, a 30-year-old cellphone thief died hours after he was allegedly tied to a pole and mercilessly thrashed by six people inside Muktanand Park in Mumbai’s Santacruz. The incident took place in early hours of December 25 when Sajjad Khan had allegedly come to the park with the aim of stealing the mobile phones of the labourers who had kept their devices for charging while they were asleep.
The six individuals—Hrishikesh Pasi (24), Hyat Ali (26), Alimuddin Shaikh (24), Motibur Alam (19), Maskar Firojjuddin (18) and Pintukumar Shah (25)—have been arrested by the Santacruz police from the park. The accused were reportedly employed for repair work at the park.
Sajjad Khan thrashed over suspicion of stealing mobile phones
After completing their work, the employees sleep in the work. The incident happened between 12:30 am and 4:30 am in the morning. According to the police, some of the labourers who were awake caught Khan while he was trying to steal their mobile phones. They allegedly tied him to a pole and brutally thrashed him before letting him off.
However, a few minutes later Khan again reached the spot and got embroiled in a heated argument with the accused who again attacked him. He was barely able to walk when two of his friends he spotted him and helped him to reach his house. He later slept in an auto near his house.
However, when Khan’s family members tried to wake him up, they found him in an unconscious state. He was then rushed to the Bhabha Hospital but was declared brought dead.
“Khan succumbed two hours after he was thrashed by the labourers. He was previously booked in cases of theft in Santacruz and Khar,” a senior inspector Shriram Koregaonkar said. The Santacruz police initially registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR) and began their investigations.
The autopsy report revealed that the victim died of multiple injuries and eyewitnesses also confirmed the incident after which police arrested the six accused from the park. They are arrested on the charges of murder and for house-trespass. All the accused were produced before the court on Sunday which remanded them to two days of police custody.