Maulana Chopped Up Teen Witness Of Sexual Abuse Cops Say As Murder Discovered 5 Years Later

A 17-year-old boy who went missing in 2020 was found to have been murdered, allegedly by an Islamic cleric.

By : Suraj Ojha | Updated at : 17 Apr 2025 11:08 AM (IST)

maharashtra-Muslim-cleric-arrested-bhiwandi-minor-murder Maulana Chopped Up Teen Witness Of Sexual Abuse Cops Say As Murder Discovered 5 Years Later

A teenaged boy was murdered in 2020, but the crime has been discovered only now.

The Maharashtra Police has arrested an Islamic cleric from Bhiwandi for the murder of a 17-year-old boy. The maulana allegedly chopped up the 17-year-old's body into pieces and buried them under his shop. What was initially being investigated as a missing person case turned out to be a gruesome murder case, police said.

The incident dates back to November 2020 when the family of the 17-year-old Shoaib Shaikh filed a missing person complaint at the local police station. However, even after nearly 5 years, the police could not find any clues about the missing boy.

But a recent in-depth investigation by the Crime Branch's property cell revealed the murder of the missing minor.

Murdered For Witnessing Sexual Assault

The incident occurred in Bhiwandi's Navi Basti where the accused, Maulana Ghulam Rabbani Shaikh, sexually abused a minor inside his shop. The act was seen by Shoaib Shaikh, who was later murdered.

Fearing arrest, the accused Maulana called Shoaib to his shop and strangled him to death. He then chopped up his body into pieces and disposed of some of them. He buried the other pieces under his shop in the Nehru Nagar area of Navi Basti.

Years passed but no clue was found about the missing boy, in the year 2023 a local living in the area informed the family about the role of Maulana in the murder of their son, the family reached the police station for help after which the police detained the Maulana for questioning but he managed to escape from the police station and moved to another state.

However, the police managed to track him down and arrested the accused. During interrogation, the cleric confessed to his crime and revealed how he killed the boy after he witnessed the sexual assault, the police said. The forensic team recovered some samples from under the shop of the accused and sent them to the Forensic Science Laboratory for examination.