The Mumbai Police’s Crime Branch on Tuesday arrested Sajjad Mogul, the watchman convicted of murdering corporate lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha in 2012, as reported by ANI.
Sajjad Mogul, who had jumped parole in June 2016, was arrested from Jammu and Kashmir. His hometown is Salamabad village in J&K's Uri. He was sentenced to life in 2014.
He was lodged at the Nashik Central Jail. He was granted parole in February 2016 to visit his ailing mother and was supposed to be back in prison on May 28. The Nashik Road Police Station had filed a case in June when he failed to return and jumped parole.
On August 9, 2012, the 25-year-old Pallavi, a corporate lawyer and a national level swimmer, was brutally assaulted and murdered by Mughal, who worked as a watchman in her 16th-floor apartment building in Wadala’s Himalayan Heights located in central Mumbai. After she spurned his advances, he managed to get a duplicate key of the main door of Pallavi’s house where she lived with her fiance. He sneaked into her apartment and tried to rape her. When she fought back, he stabbed her repeatedly before slitting her throat.
Pallavi was found lying in a pool of blood by her fiance Avik Sengupta. A year later, Sengupta, a senior associate with a law firm at Ballard Estate, died at Mahim's PD Hinduja hospital after suffering from inflammatory brain disorder.
She was the daughter of a Delhi-based IAS officer and had worked at Bollywood actor Farhan Akhtar’s firm Excel Entertainment as a legal advisor.
Mogul was arrested from Mumbai Central Station within 24 hours of committing the crime. He was convicted of murder, molestation and criminal trespass in July 2014.
A NDTV report stated that after he jumped parole, Maharashtra's Devendra Fadnavis government decided that rapists and murderers would no longer be allowed to leave jail on parole. The number of days of parole was also reduced from 90 to 46 days.
(With ANI and PTI inputs)