Murder attempt in 2010: Main shooter held from Daman

After being on the run for eight years, the main shooter, who attempted to murder late Shiv Sena leader Sachin Sawant in 2010, was arrested by the Kurar police from Daman.

Sawant was gunned down in April this year over a Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) project dispute. In 2010, Sawant had been attacked by the accused, Samarbahadur Yadav, then 33, over a fall-out regarding the same project.

A detection team led by assistant police inspector Gorakhnath Gharge and sub-inspector Dhanesh Satardekar, under the guidance of deputy commissioner of police Zone 12, Vinay Rathod, tracked Yadav based on technical evidence and nabbed him from Somnath in Daman, where he worked as a driver, on August 28.

Senior inspector, Uday Rajeshirke of Kurar police station, said, “A magistrate court remanded him in police custody till September 2. Further investigation is on.”

According to the Kurar police, on June 29 in 2010, Sawant, a resident of Ganesh Krupa chawl in Kandivli (East), was seated in his office, when Yadav alias Pintu and his aides barged in and shot at him with a country-made pistol. Sawant had survived the incident.

Back then, two men had been arrested in the case, but three remained absconding, including Yadav.

Two of them, Karpu alias Karfusingh Dakhansingh, and Jainendrasingh Ramkrupal Singh alias Bebu, are still absconding.

These three accused fled to Gujarat and kept changing their locations for 18 months. Nearly two years later, they returned to Uttar Pradesh (UP), where they hailed from.

As the Kurar police had not ascertained Yadav’s identity and because he had no other crime record, he settled in UP and started a business of selling materials required for labs. A year later, he got married and then had two sons.

His family has claimed before the police that they were not aware that he was involved in any crime.

Meanwhile, after the murder attempt, the multi-crore SRA project work slowed down. In 2018, Sawant, who was spearheading the SRA project, did the Bhoomi Pujan ceremony for the same. Days later on April 22, he was shot dead near his residence.

The news of Sawant’s murder reached Yadav who escaped to Daman, anticipating the cops would come for him. Even as the Kurar police solved the murder case with the arrest of seven persons in May, they kept the hunt on for Yadav.

Acting on a tip-off, the police traced Yadav’s relative who gave them his new phone number.

Following this, the detection team went after Yadav and arrested him from Somnath.