What started with late-night romantic conversations and letters, ended with the brutal murder of a 26-year-old engineer, who was beaten to death, stuffed inside a blue drum and dumped in a secluded bank in Vasai, by his married lover, her husband and two accomplices after he stopped sending her money.
Mumbra police have arrested the 25-year-old woman and her brother on charges of murdering her lover with the help of her husband and another accomplice. The woman’s husband and his friend are currently on the run.
The deceased was identified as Arbaaz Maqsood Ali Khan, 26, a resident of Mumbra and worked as an engineer with a prominent real estate developer in Dombivli.
The story
According to police, Khan had been in a relationship with Mahjabin Khatun Ekran Sheikh, 25, a resident of Vasai, since 2021. Investigators said the relationship seemed genuine at first, with frequent conversations and friendly exchanges between the two. However, police alleged that Mahjabeen gradually started asking Khan for money and regularly transferred it to her bank account over the years.
The police said that the relationship soured after Khan stopped sending money to the hijabis every month, which led her to plan to kill him along with her husband, Hassan Sheikh, Tariq Sheikh’s brother, and the latter’s friend Mugam Pathan.
Sequence of events
According to police, Khan went to Dadar on April 3 to collect cash for his company but never returned home. After his father filed a missing complaint at Mumbra police station, investigators analyzed Khan’s call detail records and mobile location data, which matched Mahajabin’s location in Vasai on the day of his disappearance. Police also found that Khan had moved $50,000 to Mahjabin the previous day.
Mahajaben initially denied any role and later admitted during interrogation that she had called Khan to her residence in Bhoidapada, Vasai. Police said they demanded more money from Khan, and after allegedly finding nothing of value on him, the three accused men tied his hands and legs before assaulting him with a plastic pipe, causing fatal head injuries.
The accused allegedly stuffed Khan’s body in a green barrel and dumped it in a drain in an isolated area under Valiv police station limits. Police arrested Mahjabeen and Tariq on May 7, while Hassan and Pathan remained at large.
The police registered a case under Sections 140, 3(5) (kidnapping, murder or for ransom), 103(1) (prescribes punishment for murder) and 238 (voluntarily destroying evidence of crime) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against all the four accused at Mumbra police station.
