After being let off, two suspects go into hiding

Mateen Hafeez | TNN

Mumbai: The arrest of seven persons for the murder of J Dey came as a boon for two small-time thugs, Mateen Shaikh (25) and Anwar Hatela (35), who were rounded up by the police as the first supposed suspects in the senior journalist’s killing at Powai on June 11.

The two were apparently tortured so much that they even “confessed to the crime”, which they had no inkling about, one of their friends said. After the two were let off following the seven’s arrest, they have gone into hiding. “To allay public outcry and buckling under the political pressure, the city police wanted to arrest Shaikh and Hatela. They were convinced of the two’s roles in the murder and decided to arrest, but crime branch officials were not convinced,” said a senior police officer. However, joint commissioner of police (law and order) Rajnish Seth told TOI, “This is not true. The city police picked them up and handed them over to the crime branch for investigation.”

The special squad of west region police detained Shaikh and Hatela—both stay in Mumbra—on June 14. All that the Powai police had was information put together from various sources, some of them credible and some not so credible, about the duo.

One of the tips that the police relied on was that Shaikh was linked with the Chhota Shakeel gang and Hatela was his aide. “Latching onto this piece of unconfirmed information, the Powai police took Shaikh and Hatela to the police station and began hitting them.Soon after,Shaikh‘confessed’ to everything, though Hatela protested innocence,” said the officer. Secondly, Hatela owned a Maruti Zen, which the cops claimed, was the vehicle used by the assailants to flee. The third information that apparently sealed the police’s hunch was that Hatela’s brother, Arif Kalia, was a suspected Shakeel gang member who was shot dead in a police encounter in 1998.

Positive that the tips were adding up, the cops reportedly started on their work and Shaikh “confessed”, to a cooked-up story. Shaikh claimed he was given a supari of Rs 80,000 by Hatela who “showed him the target”.

But, after going through the call records of the two’s mobiles, the crime branch learnt that they were in Mumbra on the day of murder and not in Mumbai, a source said. “There was no evidence against the two. Had they been arrested, we would have lost our face today,” he added.

The Times of India, July 2, 2011