Suraj Kumar Dubey | Pic courtesy: @a_Sanatani | Photo Credit: Twitter Palghar: The Maharashtra Police on Sunday said that the 26-year-old Indian Navy sailor, who was abducted in Tamil Nadu’s Chennai and later burnt alive in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, was an avid stock market player.
As per his family members, Suraj Kumar Dubey, a Leading Seaman (LS) who served at INS Agrani in Coimbatore, had exchanged rings with his fiancée at Daltonganj in Jharkhand on January 15. The duo were set to get married in April.
The Navy man was found with severe burn injuries in the jungles of Gholvad in Palghar and died while being taken to a hospital in Mumbai on Friday.
In a bid to solve the shocking case, Konkan Range Inspector General Sanjay Mohite told news agency PTI that 10 police teams were coordinating with their counterparts in Chennai and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, Ranchi in Jharkhand and Mumbai.
As part of the probe, bank and share transactions, loan details have been found.
Palghar Superintendent of Police Dattatray Shinde told media that Dubey had recently carried out a significant number of share transactions through broking firms in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) and Mumbai (Maharashtra).
As per Shinde, Dubey had taken a bank loan of Rs 8 lakh and borrowed Rs 5.75 lakh from a colleague. Dubey had also received Rs 9 lakh in his bank account from his future in-laws, added the Palghar SP.
Shinde further said that Dubey had promised his colleague that he would return the money soon either by cheque or online transaction.
This is to be noted that despite taking the huge loans, the balance in Dubey’s two accounts in different branches of the State Bank of India was just Rs 392.
Police are also probing the mystery behind 13 calls Dubey received from a particular number frequently seeking the details of his Raipur-Hyderabad-Chennai flight on January 30-31.
“The real motive behind the murder is not clear. Our team has already reached Chennai to probe. We hope to solve the case as soon as possible,” said the Palghar SP.
In his dying declaration to the Gholvad Police, Dubey had alleged that the armed men had demanded a ransom of Rs 10 lakh from him. However, the Navy man’s elder brother Niraj Kumar Dubey said that they did not get any ransom call between January 30 and February 5.
“We are probing all possible angles including whether the kidnapping was self-staged with the alleged Rs 10 lakh ransom demand to help clear his financial mess and ward off creditors,” said Shinde.
What happened between January 30 – February 5? As per Palghar Superintendent of Police Dattatray Shinde, Suraj Kumar Dubey was on leave from January 1 to February 1. In order to re-join the service, Dubey boarded a Hyderabad-bound flight from Ranchi at 8 am on January 30. After reaching Hyderabad, he spoke to his family members. He then boarded a different flight from Hyderabad to Chennai, from where he was scheduled to take a train to Coimbatore. Dubey landed in Chennai at 9 pm the same day.
As he exited the airport, three people pointed a revolver at Dubey and abducted him. They kept Dubey in Chennai for three days.
In the meantime, Dubey’s father, Mithilesh Dubey, contacted police and got a missing complaint registered in Jharkhand on January 31 after finding his son’s cellphones switched off. Mithilesh had also contacted INS Agrani Commander Ashok Rai to enquire about his son’s whereabouts.
However, when he could not get any information, Mithilesh filed a missing complaint at the Chainpur Police Station in Jharkhand.
The last location of Dubey’s two personal phones on the night of January 30 was found to be around the airport metro station at Meenambakkam, Chennai.
It was later revealed that Dubey had three cellphones and not two, as his family members believed. Out of the three, one was exclusively used for dealing in stocks and shares.
On February 1, Dubey’s cousin Chandan Dubey came to know about the third number, which was active. However, the Navy man did not answer after which police contacted the two share-trading firms. Mithilesh, meanwhile, claimed he had no idea about his son’s stock market investments, loans and related aspects.
The abductors took Dubey to a remote hilltop in the forests of Palghar, around 1,500 kms away, and set him ablaze after dousing him with petrol on February 5. The badly-charred Dubey, however, managed to climb down the hillock where he was spotted by locals, who immediately alerted the Gholvad Police.
The Navy man was first taken to a Dahanu hospital and later shifted to the INS Asvini — the Navy hospital — in Mumbai where he succumbed to 90 per cent burns late on Friday.
Suraj Kumar Dubey had joined the Indian Navy in 2013 and after serving at INS Chilka in Odisha, he was transferred to Mumbai. In 2019, he was posted to INS Agrani in Tamil Nadu.
