Two arrested for murdering retired high court official

Two people were arrested for the murder of a senior citizen in Bandra on Saturday. The deceased, Darais H Kapadia, 78, a retired principal secretary of Bombay High Court, was murdered in his Bandra apartment by two assailants identified as Jay Tanaji Navrang, 21, and Kamlesh Narayan Jadhav, 20.

Navrang, a resident of Parel village, was a former domestic help of the Kapadias but had been recently sacked. His father, an auto rickshaw driver, used to ferry Kapadia’s wife, Leeli, 74, to their daughter’s house and the church. Navrang used his acquaintance with the victim to gain access to the ground floor apartment and then slashed Kapadia’s throat.

On returning from her daughter’s home at around 12:30 pm, Leeli found that her husband failed to open the door despite repeated knocking. It is then that she entered with the help of a key to find Kapadia lying on the bed with blood oozing out of his neck.

“At this point, Leeli reached out to Kapadia who was trying to communicate, but he was not coherent,” said DCP Vinayak Deshmukh. “Before Leeli could call for help the accused pounced on her and tied her up, gagging her mouth with a cloth,” he added.

With Leeli tied up, Navrang took out the locker keys from her wallet and took with him all available valuables. Leeli later managed to untie herself and called an auto driver who sleeps across their house for help. The Bandra police was informed at around 3 am on Sunday. “We had taken down the details of the Kapadia’s employees, people who visited their house and had also collected forensic evidence.

We were sure that the accused was known to the victim as there was no forced entry. Based on local intelligence we picked up Navrang who confessed to the crime and led us to other accused,” added Deshmukh. The Bandra Police has recovered from the accused Rs 7.5 lakh in cash, gold ornaments worth 20 grams, credit cards and other documents. “Leeli is associated with a local NGO. The recovered money had been donated as charity, which she was going to deposit in a bank," Deshmukh said.

The accused have been booked under sections 352, 394, 397, 302, 34 of IPC.