Mystery continues to dog the sensational killing of cobbler Ashok in Begumpet on Sunday night, even as police grilled the Solanki brothers for the second consecutive day on Tuesday.
“The needle of suspicion is on them, though we have not come across any evidence to link them to the offence so far. Yet, the fact remains that the brothers possessed .32 pistols and had passed by the road where the cobbler was killed,” police said.
Over 250 others have also been questioned in connection with the murder but police are as clueless about those responsible for the crime, as they are about the motive. Video footage from secret cameras placed in the Shanti Bagh apartment building, which abutted the footpath where Ashok worked, has revealed that he frequented a nearby wine shop.
“The murder could have been captured by the camera had its range covered a few more metres,” an investigator rued.
The victim’s routine was to walk straight from his footwear repair point in S.R. Nagar to the wine shop the moment he earned the Rs. 40 required for a go.
Otherwise, the 62-year-old cobbler had neither suspicious behaviour nor any crime record.
A special police team had also gone to Nizamabad where Ashok’s wife and two sons live.
“They have no disputes with him. Inquiries revealed that the cobbler never fought with anyone,” police said. With ballistic experts deducing that the bullet that killed him was fired from a country-made pistol, police have cross-checked the possibility of any firearms license holder possessing a .32 pistol being involved in the killing.
Criminal gangs and persons previously involved in firearm cases too were summoned but not much headway has been made in the probe, police said.
