The crime branch officers have recovered a suicide note that Vijay Palande allegedly made Anuj Tikku write after drugging him. The police said that the note was recovered from Palande’s locker at a private bank. According to the police, Palande had planned to eliminate Anuj after murdering Arunkumar, Anuj’s father, to usurp the property.
Arunkumar Tikku, 62, was found murdered in the bathroom of his first floor three-bedroom apartment in Lokhandwala Complex in Mumbai on April 7.
Palande, Dhananjay Shinde and Manoj Gajkosh, all allegedly former associates of gangster Santosh Shetty, were nabbed on April 10 in connection with the murder. Palande, who introduced himself as Karan Sood, had first met the victim’s actor-son Anuj through starlet Simran Sood. Palande had told Anuj that Sood was his sister.
A preliminary probe had suggested that the trio had conspired to grab the three flats belonging to the deceased in a high-rise building in the upmarket Lokhandwala area, the police said.
Meanehile, the Bom-bay high court on Wednesday granted bail to stockbroker Gautam Vora, arrested for helping Palande, on the grounds that the sections slapped on him were all bailable. The bail was granted on a surety of `30,000.
Arrested on April 23 by the crime branch, Vora had been booked under Sections 212 (harboring an offender), 202 (intentional omission to give information) and 225 (resistance or obstruction to lawful apprehension of an offender).