Body found near Sanpada station identified, murder suspected

NAVI MUMBAI: An unidentified body found between Vashi and Sanpada railway stations on Monday, has been identified as that to be of a 23-year-old man from Airoli who worked in housekeeping section of a private firm.

Identified as Jitesh Bapu Bansode, 23, he was a resident of sector 2 in Airoli. According to police, Bansode was alcoholic and used to do odd jobs. However around 15 days ago, he joined a private firm in Rabale MIDC in housekeeping department. A class XII fail, he stayed with his father who is paralysed, mother who worked as a house help and a school going younger sister.

On Monday evening, an unidentified body was noticed by a worker around 300 m away from Sanpada Railway Station under the Palm Beach Road bridge, in a pit that was dug for construction work. The body was found in the pit which was dug along the railway tracks from Sanpada to Vashi.

“Since the body was inside the pit, nobody had noticed it till a worker went there for some work. The body had injuries on the head and the whole body and there was no mobile phone or any other identification card in his possession due to which identifying him was not possible. We had alerted all the police stations in Navi Mumbai,” senior police inspector Sambhaji Katare from Vashi GRP said.

On Sunday at around 11 am, Bansode had stepped out of the house and since he had not returned home for more than 24 hours, his mother approached Rabale police on Monday night with the missing complaint. Since the information of the unidentified body was already available with the police, the mother was asked to head towards Vashi Municipal hospital to identify the body.

“Since the body has been identified now, we have got a certain direction in the investigations and the accused would be nabbed soon,” Katare added. The postmortem of the body was not done since the body was unidentified and without the consent of the family, postmortem is not done. “Once the postmortem is done, the cause of death would be known,” Katare added.

A case of murder has been registered with Vashi GRP and the investigations are going on.