Mumbai: Friends, relatives and family members pooled Rs 45,000 to book flight tickets to take the body of 35-year-old security guard Manoj Yadav to his family in Itauri village in Madhya Pradesh, which borders UP, after he was strangled to death and his body was dumped in a water tank.Yadav, who worked for the past two years at the 10-storeyed Abhijit residential building in Vile Parle (West), was on night duty when the murder took place on Aug 1. He was killed in the early hours of Aug 2, before four men attempted a dacoity on a sixth-floor flat belonging to a businessman where the fifth accused, cook Jogeshwar Mallik (38), was employed.The Andheri Court extended the custody of the five accused till Aug 18 after completing their seven days on Thursday. The accused were Mallik, Vijay Gonjare, security guard Sharad Yerudkar (43) and his brother Mahadev (35), a farmer from Kolhapur, and Aniket Bornak (30), also a security guard.Police arrested the five on August 7 after the Juhu police team cracked the case using technical analysis following the interrogation of Mallik (38). Police said Mallik and Gonjare (41), a renowned film director’s driver, worked out the plan for the last two-and-a-half years, believing the robbery would help them resolve their debts and loans. Mallik, who lived in Khardhanda with his family and hailed from Madhubani in Bihar, had a Rs 35,000 loan taken for a vehicle purchase, while Gonjare had debts of Rs 8.5 lakh taken as loan and to pay credit card dues.Yadav was the sole bread-winner for his elderly parents, his wife Saraswati Devi and three children, including a seven-year-old son and two younger daughters. His wife, brother Vinod and elderly parents were not in a state to talk. The final rites was performed at his home village. “Yadav did not go to his native place for the last two years. The famliy wanted to see his body to perform the last rites. But financially they are totally broke and depended on my brother’s income he earned working at two places as guard. His younger brother Vinod and his cousin reached Mumbai after learning about the incident. However, they did not have the money and the body was also in bad shape with foul smell started emanating. Finally, friends, relatives and family members from native village pooled money through GPay to Vinod’s account and he booked three tickets on August 4 to fly back to MP where the final rites was performed. According to our capacity we contributed money in range from Rs1000 to Rs5000 to book three flight tickets ,” victim’s cousin brother Balaram Yadav (32), a driver by profession and stayed at Chakala in Andheri (East), told TOI on Thursday.A Juhu police officer said the businessman’s family, where Mallik worked for the past 15 years, remained traumatised after learning that their cook was behind the guard’s murder and had planned to kill them after robbing them, despite their support when police detained him. “Mallik gave the original key to the driver, Gonjare, six months earlier to use it in opening the door lock of the businessman flat on the sixth floor and exchanged it with a duplicate key, but they failed to open the lock on August 2 with the original key,” the officer said.Police said the businessman’s family was lucky because when they checked the keys, the duplicate key was functional while the original, which the cook stole, was non-functional on the day the accused attempted the dacoity.Police booked the five for murder, causing disappearance of evidence, and dacoity attempt. Police said the four accused, excluding Mallik, tied Yadav’s hands behind his back with a cloth rope, and after strangling him to death, threw his body into a water-filled tank on the ground floor of the building and closed the iron lid of the tank after partying.
