The NRI coastal police arrested a 24-year-old man on Thursday for the murder of a Class XI student from Ulwe. The victim, Vishal Mohan (17), was severely injured in a brawl in a salon early on May 6, and died due to excess blood loss from a deep wound on his right thigh.
Apart from the man arrested, Mohammad Sadeek Mohammad Shafeeq Abdul Gani, the police are looking for three others.
Vishal’s father, Mohan Karnakaran Pollayil, said, “On May 5, my wife and son came back from our vegetable shop around 10.30 p.m. They were chatting till 11 p.m., when he got a call from his friend Sultan and left. Around 1 a.m., I got call from one of Vishal’s friends saying that he had met with an accident and was being taken to Vashi hospital. He was in a coma due to excess loss of blood, and died after a few hours.”
Senior police inspector Smita Jadhav said the police found that Vishal had been attacked by a man called Lakhan following a brawl. “They were drinking and Lakhan, irked by Vishal continuously talking after getting high, and stabbed him with a knife,” Ms. Jadhav said. The police have recovered the knife.
Sultan, Gani and one other person helped Lakhan hide the crime. “Initially, the accused kept saying that Vishal fell from a building, but from the injury it was evident that it was not an accident,” Ms. Jadhav said.
A student of NR Bhagat College in Nerul, Vishal helped his mother run a vegetable shop in Ulwe. Mr. Pollayil, who was a construction and fabrication worker, is unable to work since he underwent a surgery around two years ago.
