Kiran Wankhede had a ‘holy cross’ and the letters ‘B’ and ‘K’ tattooed on his hand but it was the indelible ink voting mark on his finger that helped the Mumbai police identify him after his body was found near a public toilet on the Ghatkopar-Mankhurd Link Road in May 2019.
According to the police, head constable Dilip Dhumal was on night duty at around 6.27 am on May 3, 2019, when he received a message that a person was lying in a pool of blood near a public toilet at Zakir Hussain Nagar, Govandi. Dhumal rushed to the spot and referred the injured to the civic-run Rajawadi hospital. However, the man was declared dead before admission.
After the post-mortem, officials from the Deonar police station concluded that the body of the deceased was smashed with a stone and the cause of death was a head injury. A case under sections 302 (murder) and 397 (robbery, or dacoity, with attempt to cause death or grievous hurt) was registered against unidentified persons.
A watchman from a nearby parking area, an eye witness in the case, informed the police that around 5 am, he saw two men with the deceased. One of them slapped the deceased, took money from his wallet and pushed him by the side of the road, the watchman told the police. When the victim attempted to intervene, the two threatened to kill him. They hit the victim’s face with a stone and fled, the watchman said, as per the police.
The police arrested two drug addicts, Shafiulla Atiulla Qureshi alias Guddu (23) and Niyaz Ahmed Chaudhari (20) alias Ganja. As per the police, they confessed that they did not know who the victim was. They wanted his money and when he fought back, they allegedly smashed his head.
The police were yet to identify the victim as there was nothing on his body except the voting mark and the tattoos. The police put up the deceased’s photographs in nearby areas and displayed them on local TV channels but got no response.
As the voting ink suggested that he had participated in the general elections held on April 29, a police team began searching through the voters’ list of over 3 lakh people from the Shivaji Nagar and Deonar segments. They compared the victim’s photograph with the photographs of voters.
A police team also began a search for people with initials B and K, and taking a cue from the ‘holy cross’ tattoo, also looked for someone who might have converted to Christianity.
The police narrowed down the list to around 100 men. The first name on the list was Wankhede’s. His mother confirmed that he had been missing for several days and also identified his body from the photograph. She told the police that he got the ‘holy cross’ tattoo on his hand as it was similar to his friend’s and that his former girlfriend’s name started with B, thereby providing an explanation for the ‘B’ and ‘K’ tattoos.
The police also recovered Wankhede’s wallet from Qureshi’s house. It had Wankhede’s Aadhaar and voter cards, further supporting the police claims on the victim’s identity, helping connect the accused with the crime. Meanwhile, Wankhede’s mobile phone was recovered from Chaudhari. After Wankhede’s death, Chaudhari had used the device, even to chat with his family members.
On September 10, 2020, a sessions court in Mumbai rejected Chaudhari’s bail application, observing that there was “sufficient material to show involvement of the accused”. “The offence is serious and is punishable with death sentence,” the court further noted.
The Bombay High Court in September 2021 dismissed Chaudhari’s bail plea as withdrawn. On March 30, 2022, the sessions court rejected Qureshi’s bail plea.