<![CDATA[A senior citizen was murdered by five people on the staircase of his residence on Tuesday and the police have arrested all the people involved in the murder. The senior citizen, Aja Lama aged 78 was found stabbed to death in the staircase of Sant Niwas building on Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg. An officer at MRA Marg police station said that while scanning CCTV footage, some people were seen consistently visiting the vicinity of the building for several days in a row. The study by the police of their movements indicated that they might have been conducting a recce and the police started exploring this angle. Stills were made of the suspects by the police that were captured on the footage of the CCTV camera and these were showed to people in and around the building. On seeing the stills some of them said they had seen one of the men come to the building along with Lama’s grandson Dorji Lama aged 29, who stays in Dombivli. The police said that they had already made inquiries with Dorji after Lama’s death and he told the police that he loved his grandfather very much as he single handedly raised Dorji after he lost his parents in an accident 10 years ago. The police again called him for questioning and while he initially denied having gone to the building, he ultimately confessed, the officer said. In the confession made by Dorji to the police he said he wanted to make fast money, and believed he would inherit Lama’s property in the event of his death. He said he hatched a plan along with four of his friends, who also stay in Dombivli, promising to pay them handsomely once he gets Lama’s property. The four accomplices, identified by the police as Utkarsh Soni (19), Arjun Bhise (22), Jayesh Kanojia (19) and Anand Rai (21), started keeping a watch outside Lama’s building for over a week. They learned that the senior citizen, Lama would leave on his bicycle at 5.30 p.m. every day, go to Colaba market to collect rent from vendors at three stalls owned by him, and return by 8.30 p.m. The police said that on Monday night, the four accused waited in the staircase for Lama to return. As the building, apart from Lama’s residence, is entirely commercial, everyone had left for the day. As soon as Lama came up the staircase leading up to the first floor, they approached him and stabbed him to death. The body lay there all night and was spotted the next morning by a tailor who has his shop on the second floor. All the five were arrested following Dorji’s confession, and charged with murder under the Indian Penal Code.]]>
