Mumbai: ‘Stone man’ smashes heads of 2 asleep on footpaths in 15-min span, CCTV nails him – Times of India

MUMBAI: JJ Marg police recently arrested a 40-year-old ragpicker for allegedly killing a man who was asleep on a footpath by smashing his head with a paver block.
During his interrogation, the accused also reportedly admitted to similarly smashing the head of another person with a large stone at Byculla 15 minutes before the JJ Marg crime on the night of October 23.
He told the police he did not know either of the victims. Police are trying to establish the identity of the two victims. Investigators arrested the accused, Suresh Gauda, with the help of CCTV footage.
Gauda reportedly told the police that he had been arrested in 2015 in connection with a similar murder in Kurla where he had killed a man by smashing his head. He was acquitted by the court in that case. Gauda, who lived on a pavement in Pydhonie area, collected and sold scrap metal, bottles and other waste for a living.
Late on October 23, Byculla police had alerted other police stations about a murder; a person’s head was found smashed near the Byculla fruit market. In some time, JJ Marg police received a call about another person found similarly killed on a footpath in their jurisdiction. The police sent the body to a hospital for a post-mortem.
Police teams scanned the CCTV cameras of the nearby areas in Byculla and JJ Marg and nabbed the accused from Mohammed Ali Road on October 24.
The accused said he was walking on the road when he saw a man sleeping on the footpath. On seeing him, he took a large stone and smashed his head with it. He repeated the crime with a paver block upon coming across another sleeping person 15 minutes later.
The accused has now been sent to judicial custody. Byculla police, which has also registered a murder case, will now move court to seek Gauda’s custody in the case.
Gauda reportedly told the police his parents live in Karnataka. A police team will be visiting his parents.
Police are trying to find out if Gauda had committed other crimes in the past. Cases with similar modus operandi will be at the centre of the probe.
The motive in the two murders is still not known. and the police are making further inquiries.
Dilip Sawant, additional police commissioner, south region, confirmed they have arrested the accused and the police are probing the case. Inspector Laxmikant Salunke is the investigating officer in this case.