A person claiming to be calling from Yemen told the Mumbai police on Saturday that the Indian Mujahideen (IM) was responsible for the killing of senior crime reporter Jyotirmoy Dey.
The journalist was shot dead a week ago by four unknown assailants in Powai here.
“A person called up the police control room at 5.30 today [Saturday] evening saying that the Indian Mujahideen had hired shooters from Kashmir to kill J Dey. He also said that the shooters were from Hyderabad, Bihar and Srinagar and that they were paid Rs. 4 lakh for the killing. We are verifying it,” a senior police officer told reporters here on Saturday.
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Police officials said the claim needed verification as the IM is not present in Jammu and Kashmir, but that all the information related to the case was being taken seriously. According to a senior police officer, more than 150 persons were questioned as of Saturday.
The officer also said that the police now had nine CCTV clips of the incident. This includes footage from the professional establishments near the spot.
Initially, the police had only one CCTV clip. This, however, was discarded since the images were grainy due to heavy rain at the time of the incident.
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The police had earlier said that as they were trying to reconstruct the day of the incident, they had stumbled upon some gaps, which they were trying to fill up. The police have now said that they have received J Dey's call records from 1.30 p.m. — when he left his mother's place in Ghatkopar — till 2.45 pm.