Agencies/Mumbai


Police produce six of the seven men arrested in the murder of Mumbai crime journalist J Dey after a press conference yesterday
Police yesterday said that they had arrested seven people for the murder of a prominent Mumbai crime journalist and revealed that the hit was believed to have been ordered by an underworld boss.
Mafia don Chhota Rajan had ordered the hit on Jyotirmoy Dey but the gang was unaware of the target until afterwards, Himanshu Roy, head of the Mumbai Police crime branch, said at a news conference.
Dey, the investigations editor of the Mid-Day newspaper, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Mumbai’s northern suburb of Powai on June 11.
Roy told reporters that the gang had followed the reporter on three motorcycles and in a four-by-four vehicle, before shooting him five times from behind.
The officer said the gang was paid Rs500,000 ($11,000) for the contract killing and fled to a series of temple towns around the country in the immediate aftermath, where most of them were arrested.
The murder weapon, a US-made .32 revolver and 20 rounds of Czech-made ammunition, have been recovered, he added.
Roy identified the man who fired the five bullets that killed Dey as Rohit Thangappan Joseph alias Satish Kalia, 34, a professional assassin who acted on the orders of Rajan.
“Kalia’s interrogation has revealed that 20 days before Dey’s murder, he got a call about a job to be done. But he was not told who the target was. Later Kalia collected Rs200,000 from an unidentified person in Chembur in south-central Mumbai,” Roy said.
He said that Kalia got the revolver from an unidentified person in Kathgodam near Nainital in Uttarakhand.
“After his return from Nainital, Kalia contacted another shooter, Anil Bhanudas Waghmode, 35, and asked him to start building up a team for the operation. Till June 6, neither Kalia nor Waghmode knew the target,” Roy said.
Kalia and Waghmode then contacted the other five associates - Abhijit Kashiram Shinde, 28, Arun Janardan Dake, 27, Sashin Suresh Gaikwad, 27, Nilesh Narayan Shengde alias Babloo, 34 and Mangesh Damodar Agavane, 25.
On June 6, Kalia was given Dey’s description along with the registration number of his motorcycle and also the address of two spots where he was to be found. One was the address of his Mid-Day office in Parel area of south-central Mumbai and another in Hiranandani area of Powai in northwest Mumbai - close to Dey’s house.
For the next three days Kalia and Waghmode followed Dey, but could not find a suitable chance to shoot Dey. “According to Kalia, they did not shoot Dey near his office as they ran the risk of being noticed and not being able to escape,” Roy said.
On June 11, they followed him in Hiranandani where Dey first went to have a few documents photocopied and then to a courier office.
“Once Dey emerged from the courier office, they followed him. Kalia, who was riding pillion then asked the driver to take the motorcycle close to Dey’s and shot five rounds from behind and the left side, one of them piercing Dey’s heart,” Roy said.
The assailants then went to a pre-decided spot in Jogeshwari in northwest Mumbai and after they watched television they realised the victim was an ace journalist.
“According to Kalia, he then called Chhota Rajan and told him that Dey was a journalist and they had not expected to have been given a contract for killing a journalist,” Roy said.
“Kalia said they were promised more money, which they collected from a spot in Nalasopara in Thane district,” he added.
Roy said the gang members immediately split and dispersed to different parts of the country to escape the police dragnet.
Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik added: “We do not know why he was killed. We don’t have the answers at the moment.”
“Finally we have made a breakthrough in the case that was a huge challenge for the police,” Patnaik said.
“The case has been cracked, as we have arrested the accused and we have all the evidence including weapons.”
NDTV channel, citing police sources, reported that Dey was seen to have close contacts with Chhota Rajan’s rival gang, and that the killing was ordered in “retaliation.”
Rajan was once the right-hand man of Dawood Ibrahim, the Mumbai crime kingpin suspected of being behind the deadly 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts that killed more than 250 people.