Chetan Khankar confessed to the murder during interrogation
A 19-year-old student of Kohinoor Technical Institute, Borivli branch, was arrested on Friday for murdering his classmate, Sanjesh Janu Borle, who had allegedly threatened the accused of uploading his semi-nude pictures on a social networking site. The arrested accused has been identified as 19-year-old Chetan Prakash Khankar.
On November 1, 2011, the Kasturba Marg police officials had recovered Sanjesh's decomposed body from near Gavdevi temple area in Sanjay Gandhi National Park after Pradeep Pandya, a local, alerted them. Initially, the officials had suspected that the deceased had been killed by a leopard and shut the case. But before they did so, the officials had circulated Sanjesh's cellphone's IMEI number, which they had retrieved from his existing service provider, to several service providers asking them to inform the police the moment his phone was switched on. Sanjesh, 19, was a resident of Gandhi Nagar in Borivli (West). Luck favoured the police, and last week, one of the service providers intimated the officials about the cellphone's location. Based on this information, the police officials traced the phone.
Inspector Bhai Keshav Mahadeshwar of Kasturba Marg police station said, "When we traced Chetan's friend via his cellphone's location, he told us that he had found the handset in the national park. We then asked him to take us to the spot where he had found it. He took us in the opposite direction from where Sanjesh's body was recovered. Suspecting that he was hiding something, we interrogated him, during which he said that Chetan had gifted him the handset. When we inquired with Chetan about the incident, we discovered that he too is a student of the same institute. We then interrogated the accused and he confessed to his crime." Chetan has been booked for murder under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Both, Chetan and Sanjesh, had enrolled for the mobile repairing course at the institute.
According to the police, a few months before his murder, Sanjesh had clicked Chetan's semi-nude pictures and had also shot a video of him doing sit-ups after he was punished by one of the professors. Sanjesh, who would often bully Chetan, had threatened him about posting his semi-nude photos on a social networking site. This would always lead to an altercation between the two. During one these fights, Sanjesh had slapped Chetan in front of his classmates. Unable to bare the mental torture and humiliation, Chetan hatched a plot to kill Sanjesh.
"Chetan was aware that Sanjesh was a regular visitor at the park. On the day of the murder, Chetan followed the deceased inside the park and on finding an opportunity attacked Sanjesh. Once Sanjesh lost consciousness, the accused smashed his head with a stone. He then took his cellphone and threw away the SIM card," revealed an officer from Kasturba Marg police station. The officials added that following media reports on the incident, which stated that the police had only registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR) in the case and were suspecting it to be an incident of leopard attack, Chetan was relieved to hear the news and gifted the handset to his friend.