Hit job gone wrong: Plan hatched just 24 hours before murder

NAVI MUMBAI: All that it took 39-year-old Sumit Jain to finalise his plan to eliminate his close acquaintance cum business partner – Nerul resident Aamir Khanzada – was just 24 hours. Interrogation of the five accused, arrested by the Navi Mumbai crime branch for the murder of the president of Raigad district unit of the NCP (SP), has revealed that the entire plan was hatched only a day before the murder.
“On August 20, just a day before the murder, the mastermind Jain and prime accused Vital Nakade along with the two contract killers held a meeting at the Viviana Mall in Thane. The four discussed how to execute the murder and finalised the deal at ₹50 lakh,” said ACP (Crime) Ajay Landge.
Although the plan was finalised on that day, the thought of murder was planted in Jain’s mind 10 days earlier following a dispute over a land deal, according to police. Khanzada was not kept in the loop of the deal, done between Jain, Nakade and a third unidentified person, which led to the dispute.
“The entire land dealing was bogus. Using false documents, a 3.5-acre land was sold to a third party for a sum of ₹3 crore. The original owner of the land had expired during the pandemic. Khanzada was demanding his share from the initial ₹60 lakh received from the deal and was threatening to disclose the forgery if his demand was not met. Jain was already in a deep financial mess, therefore Khanzada’s demand became the breaking point,” said DCP (Zone 1) Pankaj Dahane. Another police official said that a payment of ₹90 lakh more was stopped by the buyer. “The buyer might have got a whiff of the scam. All the cash transactions were through cheques.”
Khanzada was murdered on August 21 while traveling with Jain for what he believed to be a business meeting. He was shot in the head by one of the two contract killers accompanying the duo in the car. One of them, identified as Jaisingh Mudaliar, has been nabbed while the other is absconding.
“Khanzada and Jain were seated behind in his Baleno car while the accused were seated in the front. Khanzada was shot dead in sector 4 of Nerul. The trio then proceeded to discard the body in the Karnala forest area,” said Landge.
The postmortem report, sources say, has been kept reserved by the hospital. “As per the initial report, there is skull and rib fracture. Since the body was decomposed, it was hard to determine the entry and exit wounds of the bullets. The report is kept reserved and now forensics will take over,” said a police source.
Meanwhile a police team has been assigned with the task of locating the firearms, knife and phone used in the murder. “After Khanzada was shot, Jain also shot himself on his leg in a bid to mislead police. Then a dispute over the payment of the contract money led to one of the killers stabbing Jain multiple times on the injured leg. This led to Jain bleeding to death. We are looking for the weapons which were discarded by the accused at different locations. A search is also underway for the sixth accused who is absconding,” said ACP Deepak Sakore.