Guru Waghmare murder case: Statements of 22 ‘enemies’ in charge sheet

MUMBAI: The Worli police have filed a chargesheet in the murder case of police informer and history-sheeter Guru Waghmare (50), who was known in police circles as “Chulbul Pandey”, the daredevil cop character in a Salman Khan movie. The police said they had recorded the statements of 35 witnesses, including the 22 people whose names the deceased had tattooed on his thighs and back and had also mentioned in his personal diary.
On July 24, Waghmare was stabbed several times and his throat slit by two unknown accused at the Soft Touch Spa in Worli. Earlier in the day, he had thrown a birthday party for the spa staff in Sion and then returned to the spa. When the three staffers left the spa and Waghmare was alone with a woman, the two assailants stabbed him to death.
Waghmare was a well-known informer in the western suburbs and known to several policemen for his vast network. Posing as a Right to Information (RTI) activist, he used the information to extort money, and had several extortion cases registered against him. After his murder, the Worli police found his dead body with the names of his “enemies” tattooed on his thighs.
The police arrested Waghmare’s girlfriend Mary Joseph, Mohammad Feroz Ansari, Saqib Ansari, the owner of the spa Santosh Sherekar and the spa manager Shamshad Ansari for the murder. “Sherekar had paid ₹12 lakh to Mohammad Feroz Ansari and Saqib Ansari to eliminate Waghmare, as he was suffering on account of the latter’s complaints against his spa business,” said a police officer. “Mohammed Feroz Ansari, who had a hair-cutting business at Nalasapora, was also one of Waghmare’s victims. He bought a pair of scissors worth ₹15,000, which the duo used to stab him.”
The murderers were nabbed when Ansari purchased gutka via UPI, which helped the police officers trace him. Ansari’s interrogation led them to Sherekar, whose name was one of those tattooed on the body of the deceased.
The police said that Waghmare would tattoo the name of whoever he got angry with to mark him as an enemy. He had 22 names on his thighs, including those of police officers who had arrested him, journalists who had written about him and even his family members. He deleted some names after he was satisfied that the person was not his enemy.
“We recorded the statements of all 22 people whose names he had tattooed, including the police, his son, daughter-in-law and journalists, and found that nobody had any motive to kill Waghmare,” said the police officer. “We concluded that it was Sherekar, who was unhappy with him.”
Police officials said that Waghmare also left behind a diary in which he used to write down his daily activities, including the names of the people he had fought with. Interestingly, the diary—maintained from 2014—also mentions the names of the spas from whose owners he had extorted money.
Waghmare would file RTI applications mainly against spas in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane. He moved around in a Hyundai Aura with the words ‘Kayda aur Suvyavastha’ (Law and Order) written on it. There are eight FIRs, and 22 non-cognisable cases registered against him in the city for serious offences like rape, molestation and extortion.