On May 21 last year Nalex Travels in Vile Parle got a call from a man who identified himself as Deepak. He wanted to rent a Tata Innova to go to Shirdi with three other people. He asked for the car to be sent to a place near Vile Parle. Nalex Travels then sent a car along with the driver— Dattatraya Gaikwad. Two days later when repeated attempts at contacting Gaikwad, who had still not returned, failed Nalex Travels filed a case of robbery against him at Vile Parle police station.

During their investigation the Vile Parle police had informed police stations along the Mumbai-Nashik route to look out for Gaikwad.

The police soon came to know that a body had been found in Kasara with a licence bearing Gaikwad’s name. After confirming that the body was Gaikwad’s, the police began to look for Deepak and found out his number from the phone records of the travel agency.

The police then came to know that there was no Deepak and that two of the men who travelled in the car were in a jail in Uttar Pradesh under the Arms Act.

Thereafter, they applied for the custody of the two men—Prashant Singh (23) and Sachin Singh (22), arresting them on January 12. The two accused have criminal records in UP though they have none in Mumbai. They have now been sent to jail. The police are still on the look out for the Innova and the others involved in the case. 

“The four men had used a false name to get the car from the agency as they wanted to steal it,” said Assistant Police Inspector R Kane of Vile Parle police station.