Pager message, Gateway blast help cops crack murder

At a time when Mumbai''s policemen are receiving brickbats from all quarters, two officers have shown that persistence always brings rewards, not to mention that all-important piece of luck. It was a murder mystery that kept the cops in the hunt for three long years.
In the end, it was a pager message, a scribble on a piece of paper and the recent bomb blast case at Gateway of India that did it for officers Sunil Babbar and Latif Sheikh, both formerly attached to the Colaba police.
Presently, Babbar is an inspector at Special Branch 1, while Sheikh is with the Crime Branch unit at Fort. “It wasn’t an easy investigation, but we put all the difficulties behind to pursue the case to its logical end,� says Sheikh.
Rohington Satta was found murdered at his flat (S-23) at Cusrow Baug on November 31, 2000. Satta, a bachelor, stayed alone. His brother was a solicitor in Switzerland.
“The police were informed the next day. We went to Satta''s house and found several white papers in the room. He had this habit of writing everything on a piece of paper. On one of the pieces, he had written the word ‘carpenter’,� recalls Babbar. The police also recovered a pager where the number of a carpenter, Roshan Ali (25), was stored. On questioning the security staff at the gate, the police found out that a carpenter had indeed visited Satta’s house.
“We found out that Ali had left for his native village, Balrampur, in Uttar Pradesh by train. In order to catch him with the booty, which included costly jewellry, red-handed, we flew to Uttar Pradesh and waited for Ali to arrive. When he arrived there with his wife and the valuables, we immediately arrested him and took the next train back to Mumbai,� says Babbar.
But there was a problem. One of the prime witnesses, a boy, Gulab Deshmukh, who used to deliver flowers to Satta’s house, had gone missing. “It was after the blast at Gateway of India, in which the boy’s name figured in the list of injured people, that we found him and the rest was decided by the Sessions Court,� says Babbar. Ali has been awarded life imprisonment.
The investigations were so time-consuming that Babbar and Sheikh didn’t go home at all some days. “The case was important and we managed to convince our families about it,� say Latif and Babbar. Colaba MLA Dinaz Patrawala, who plans to felicitate Babbar and Sheikh, says, “They did an excellent job. They are an example for many others in the police departme