The police said a cab driver, Sarfaraz Shaikh alias Rais, was allegedly hired to kill Siddharth Sanghavi, who went missing on September 5 evening. Shaikh, a resident of Koparkhairane in Navi Mumbai, has been arrested.
After he went untraceable, the car of Sanghvi, a resident of upscale Malabar Hill area in South Mumbai, was on Saturday found abandoned in adjoining Navi Mumbai with blood stains on its rear seat. A knife was also recovered from the car.
The police said they found Shaikh's role in hatching the conspiracy, murder and destroying Sanghavi's body and the car used in the crime was found parked near his residence.
After allegedly killing Sanghvi on Wednesday, the accused driver dumped his body near the Haji Malang shrine at Kalyan in neighbouring Thane district.
During the initial investigation, Shaikh revealed that four people, including a woman, have hired him to kill Sanghvi, who recently got promoted. Sanghvi's promotions and increments had allegedly caused some resentment among some of his colleagues.
Quoting its sources in HDFC Bank, the TOI in a report said that Sanghvi was promoted thrice in a span of ten years. He joined the bank as a senior manager in 2077. He was made an assistant vice president in 2011 and in 2015 he got promoted as a deputy vice president. In January 2017, Sanghvi was made vice president.
A missing complaint was registered at Mumbai’s N M Joshi Marg police station after Sanghavi's family approached the police as he did not return home till late night on Wednesday.
The accused driver was initially detained by the Navi Mumbai Crime Branch and handed over to the Mumbai Police, which placed him under arrest.
Shaikh kept changing his statements after he was detained and questioned. He did not name the mastermind and tried to change the direction of the investigation by giving misleading information.