After six years, arrests made in Jayesh Khude’s murder case

After a 6-year investigation, Mumbai's LCB arrests 2 men for the 2018 murder of Jayesh Khude over a ₹100 dispute. Police skeptical of their motives.

Mumbai: After six years of investigation, the Local Crime Branch (LCB) of Raigad cracked a case, leading to the arrest of two men in connection with the murder of 27-year-old Jayesh Kashinath Khude in 2018. The accused claimed that the murder was sparked by a dispute over a mere ₹100 deal, but the police remain skeptical of their motives.

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The murder took place on April 13, 2018, when an unidentified body was found in a drain parallel to the road from Chavane village in Rasayani. Rasayani police identified the body as Khude’s but couldn’t solve the case. They treated it as an undetected case and filed an ‘A summary’ report in court.

Six years later, assistant police inspector Sandeep Poman received a tip-off, leading to the arrest of Omkar Sunil Shinde, 25, an estate agent from Khalapur. During questioning, Shinde confessed himself and Rohit Vishnu Patil, 26, a software engineer from Karjat, in Khude’s murder. Patil was then an engineering student when the murder happened while Shinde was a graduate student.

“The accused claim that on the day of the murder, the duo were going somewhere when they saw Khude standing on the roadside asking for a lift. They said that he was drunk and he offered ₹100 for giving him a lift. But after he was dropped, he refused to pay and in the fight between them, the duo killed him. The deceased had multiple stabbing injuries. The reason given by them doesn’t sound to be genuine enough to kill a person. The question of where they got the weapon is also not answered by the accused. Hence we are investigating the case further to identify the actual motive. The duo was not known to the deceased but we are verifying the claim,” senior police inspector Balasaheb Khade from LCB said.

To know more about Khude’s background and any possible connections to the accused, police are reaching out to the deceased’s relatives. Interestingly, it was found that Shinde had been involved in another assault case just five days after Khude’s murder, leading to his arrest by Rasayani police. While the public demanded justice in Khude’s case, little did authorities realise that one of the murder suspects was already in custody for another offence.