Sixth and last accused arrested in Navi Mumbai double murder case

Navi Mumbai police arrested Rehan Khan, the last accused in a builder murder case. The crime stemmed from a hit job gone wrong over a financial dispute.
After a month-and-half-long chase, the crime branch officials arrested the sixth and the last accused wanted in connection with the murders of two builders in Navi Mumbai.
The sixth accused has been identified as Rehan Khan, 34, and was arrested in Bhiwandi last week. On August 21, missing complaints were filed with the Nerul police by the families of two land dealers, including Aamir Khanzada, 42, president of the Raigad district unit of the NCP (SP), and his friend/business partner Sumit Jain, 39.
Police investigation has revealed that the case was a hit-job-gone-wrong. Officers said that Jain had hired contract killers to get Khanzada bumped off over a monetary dispute between them and accordingly hired men to kill the 42-year-old land dealer. The hitmen killed Jain, following a dispute over payment of the contract money which was fixed at ₹50 lakh.
The matter quickly turned into a murder investigation after the dead body of Jain bearing a gunshot wound to the leg was found abandoned in the bushes of a Gagode village in Pen Taluka on August 23.
“Rehan Khan is the last of the accused involved in the crime and has been on the run since the murder. Three teams of police were deployed in Hyderabad, Solapur and Pune consistently tracking the movement of the accused. No sooner with technical assistance was his location traced to Mumbai, a trap was laid, and he was nabbed from his home,” said an officer. It was in the course of the investigation to locate Khanzada that the police retrieved his highly decomposed body from the forest area of Karnala Bird Sanctuary in Panvel on August 27. Khanzada was killed by a single gunshot to his head on August 21 while seated inside his Baleno car along with Jain and two accused, one of them was the sixth accused.
“Khan along with the main accused was seen on CCTV footage arriving on a bike and boarding the car occupied by both the deceased,” said the officer. The matter garnered more limelight after police found that Jain was the mastermind behind the Khanzada murder intended to kill the 42-year-old. In a bid to project the incident as kidnapping, Jain had bled to death after shooting himself in the leg.

The Navi Mumbai police had initially arrested five accused hired by Jain and were on the lookout for the sixth accused. The five accused arrested are identified as Vithal Baban Nakade, 43, Jaising alias Raja Madhu Mudliyar, 38, Anand alias Andry Rajan Krunj 39, Virendra alias Goriya Bharat Kadam, 24 and Ankush alias Ankya Prakash Sitapure, 35.
The murder, according to police, was the result of a dispute over the sharing of profits allegedly demanded by Khanzada from a bogus land deal allegedly done by Jain.
As per the police, the hit job decided at ₹50 Lakh was given by Jain to hitman Mudliyar through another business associate and one of the accused Nakhade.
Some of the weapons used in the murder were found in the possession of the sixth accused. “He is a hardened criminal and already has 3 murder cases registered. A knife and a gun used in the murder were found in his possession. One more gun was used but was thrown en route following the murder,” said the officer.