Mumbai: The Rabale MIDC police recovered the weapon used in the Priyanka Gurav murder case from a nullah at Gandhinagar in Dombivali on Friday night.
After taking the police to three different locations in Rabale and Dombivali, the accused Durgesh Patwa (25) finally took them to the location where he had disposed of the weapon.
“The weapon was a big kitchen knife, which is easily available with roadside vendors selling iron utensils and knives. Patwa had bought the knife a few months ago from a vendor in Kalyan for his kitchen. He used it to chop Gurav’s body into three parts,” Assistant Police Inspector Amar Jagdale said.
The police also found bloodstains in the pipeline of the Gurav family’s bathroom after the forensics team dug around 10 feet from the bathroom along the drainage line.
“The accused had washed the bathroom and we could not find any traces of blood there. But with the help of chemicals, the forensics team found bloodstains in the pipeline. The accused had also cleaned the car used to dump the body parts. The forensics experts will use the same method to find blood samples in the car as well,” Mr. Jagdale said. The clothes worn by the accused while committing the crime have been recovered from their respective homes, but they have no bloodstains either.
The black car, covered in a plastic sheet, was recovered from a private parking space Ambivali on Monday night. The car belonged to Vishal Lalchand Sony (32), a close friend of Patwa, who helped him dump the body parts after Patwa promised to buy his car for ₹50,000.
Gurav’s husband, Sidhesh, in-laws Manohar and Madhuri, and their friend Patwa were arrested for the murder on May 12. Sony was arrested on May 14.
The accused had strangled and smothered Gurav. Patwa had chopped up the body in the bathroom, and dumped the parts in different locations.
On May 6, Gurav’s torso was found in a nullah at Mahape. The next day, her husband registered a missing person’s complaint with the Worli police, saying she had not returned home after leaving on May 5 for an interview. The body was identified after the tattoo of Om and Ganapati on the left shoulder matched the description in the missing person’s complaint.
