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The Mumbai Crime Branch on Tuesday arrested a 42-year-old man in connection with the Dr Asha Goel murder case in 2003.
The arrested suspect has been identified as Pravin Surendranarayan Vatsa. He was arrested from Mehrauli area of Delhi by the crime branch sleuths. Police think he can reveal some vital information in the case.
According to the police, Canadian resident Dr Asha Sadankumar Goel had come to Mumbai in 2003 and on August 23, 2003 she was supposed to leave for Canada. On August 22, she had come to her brother Sureshchandra Agarwal’s house. He is a resident of Sudhakar building, 14 floor, ND Dhabolkar Marg, Malabar Hill.
On August 23, at around 6.30 am, when complainant Sureshchandra woke up, he saw the door of the guest room where Asha was sleeping, ajar. On entering the room, he saw Asha lying in a pool of blood. A doctor residing in the same building declared Asha dead. A complaint was lodged with the Malabar Hill police.
On September 2, 2003 the police made their first breakthrough in the case and arrested one Pradeep Prabhakar Parab. Later, the case was handed over to the crime branch. After Pradeep’s interrogation, few more names of suspects cropped up. On November 1, 2005 crime branch officials arrested Pawankumar
Satyanarayan Goenka, Manohar Mahadeo Shinde and Narendra Ghanshyamdas Goel in the case (all four are currently on bail). Narendra Goel had applied for bail in sessions court and had said that he was in Delhi when the murder took place,police said.
“It was learnt that instead of Narendra, his father’s servant Pravin had gone to Delhi and after the murder Narendra too had left for Delhi. On August 1, 2008 Pravin was subjected to a lie-detector test, but nothing concrete was revealed. We had summoned Pravin to be present at the crime branch office on December 2, 2008,
December 24, 2008 and January 12, 2009, but he went into hiding.
“We have arrested him from Mehrauli in Delhi. We suspect that he was aware of the conspiracy and he abetted the accused in the crime. Pravin was produced before a local court on Tuesday, which remanded him in police custody till April 2,” said a crime branch source.