Uran Murder Case: POCSO Case Warrant Against Accused Issued 4 Days Before Stabbing

In a shocking revelation, it has been found that the district and additional session judge of Panvel had issued a non-bailable warrant against the Uran murder accused, Daud Shaikh, on July 20 under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in the case registered against him in 2019.

However, the copy of the warrant reached the senior police inspector of Uran Police station only on July 29, four days after the murder of 20-year-old Yashashree Shinde. 

Shaikh was arrested from Karnataka on Tuesday morning and brought to Navi Mumbai on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, he was produced before the Panvel sessions court, which ordered police custody for seven days for further investigation. The Uran police team is now looking for the bag and phone that belonged to Shinde and the weapon that Shaikh used to kill her.

After Shaikh’s interrogation, the crime branch detailed the chronology of the incident. Shaikh knew Shinde as they studied in the same school. He failed his Class X exam but she graduated. In September 2019, Shinde’s father registered a case against Shaikh after he saw them both in a garden. After being in jail for around 45 d ays, he was let out on bail. During the Covid lockdown, he went to his hometown in Gulbarga but stayed in touch with Shinde.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (crime branch) Amit Kale said, “They argued often and when she blocked him on her phone, he called from his friend Mohsin’s phone. Eventually, she became friends with Mohsin as well. When we found call records between Mohsin and Shinde, he was interrogated but no link was found.”

Kale said that Shaikh wanted the victim to go with him to Bengaluru but she had been ignoring his advances. He also had trust issues and suspected her to be in touch with other men over the phone. “To make her meet him, he would always post their photos on Facebook and would tell her that he would delete only if she agreed to meet him. By using such blackmailing tactics, he forcibly met her in Uran,” Kale added.

On July 22, he left from Karnataka and reached Uran on July 23. On July 24, Shinde took a half-day leave from work place and met him near Juinagar railway station. On July 25, it was her weekly off and hence he asked her to meet him. “Shinde first went to meet a friend in the afternoon and at 1.30pm she met Shaikh near the bushes at Uran railway station.

Kale said that Shaikh had planned the murder and came prepared with a knife-like weapon. He had decided to kill her if she refused to go to Bengaluru. She rejected his demand, following which he stabbed her, the DCP said. Just before the murder, at around 2.45pm, she made a distress call to her friend but his phone was not in the network area. After the murder, Shaikh called his friend in Karnataka and asked to send some money. He then went to Panvel railway station and withdrew Rs1,000 from the ATM. Later, he went to Kalamboli circle and boarded a bus to Gulbarga, where he hid till his arrest.

“We will also invoke the section under the Atrocity Act against him,” Assistant Commissioner of Police (crime branch) Ajay Landge said. The police are also trying to retrieve the photos he had uploaded on social media, which he later deleted. The post-mortem report is still awaited, the police said. The team from Uran police station, along with the central unit of crime branch headed by senior police inspector Sunil Shinde, have been at the forefront of the investigation of the case.