Twenty five days after the gruesome killing of a labourer at a Toyota car service centre in Mumbai, an independent fact-finding team of lawyers and labour-rights activists has alleged that the death was a possible hate crime that the company is attempting to pass off as an accident.
On September 29, Mohammed Yakub Shaikh died almost instantly after a high-pressure air pipe was forcibly thrust into his rectum while he was at work. Shaikh, 48, was employed as a casual labourer at the Shinrai-Toyota Service Centre in Kalachowki in South Mumbai, where his job was to wash and dry serviced cars.
According to the company’s version – also recorded in the First Information Report filed with the police – Shaikh was attacked by his colleague Santosh Arekar in a bout of “fun” and “teasing”, and his death was an accident.
Shaikh’s family, however, claims that he was attacked deliberately by more than one person, and that the attack could have been triggered by an argument Shaikh’s colleagues had with him about eating mutton during Bakri Eid.
The case of Shaikh’s murder was not widely reported in the media until local politicians from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen stepped in two weeks ago, highlighting the possibility that this could be a hate crime with communal motivations. The case then drew the attention of the Urdu press and a few Muslim community websites, while a group of eight independent activists – including Susan Abraham, Suresh Rajeshwar, Feroze Mithiborewala and Anthony Samy – set up a fact-finding team to answer the many questions raised by Shaikh’s family.
Was the murder of Yakub Shaikh a communal hate crime? At a press conference on Wednesday, the fact-finding committee alleged that it was. The police, the complainant and managers at Toyota claim it was merely a case of a prank gone wrong. The victim’s family, meanwhile, does not seem to care whether the alleged mention of Bakri Eid makes the murder communal or not.
“We just want justice, because we simply cannot believe this murder is the work of just one man,” said Shafia Shaikha, 22, Yakub Shaikh’s daughter. “Why aren’t the police investigating properly? Why are they so willing to accept the company’s version of events?”
The family and the fact-finding team have now demanded an independent judicial probe into the case.
The incident
On the afternoon of September 29, Shaikh’s wife Shehnaz Begum received a call from a Shinrai-Toyota employee telling her that her husband had vomited and collapsed after eating lunch at work. When the family reached KEM Hospital, they were met by four company employees even before they could locate Shaikh.
“They took my son aside and told him that his father had had a heart attack,” said Shehnaz Begum, speaking with Scroll at her one-room slum tenement at Shiv Nagar in Sewri. "The doctors said he was dead when they brought him in." When the family finally saw Shaikh’s body, they were stunned – every part of his body was “swollen like a balloon”, with his eyes bulging out abnormally. Suspecting foul play, they insisted on a post mortem.
At this point, more than 10 senior staff members of Toyota showed up at the hospital and told the family that Shaikh’s death was a murder by his colleague Santosh Arekar, who had inserted an air pipe emitting pressure of 140 pounds per square inch into his rectum, causing him to bloat up and perish within seconds. The preliminary post mortem report, which confirmed the death to be “unnatural”, states that Shaikh’s intestines, abdominal cavities and scrotal sac had burst due to “pulmonary air embolism”.
“When they gave us this news in the hospital, the company managers said that the man behind the attack had been arrested and an FIR had already been filed,” said Shaikh’s daughter Shafia. “How could they file an FIR without even informing the family first?”
The question of meat
The FIR was filed by Abdul Kadir Khan, an 18-year-old car washer who joined Shaikh’s team at Shinrai-Toyota just two months ago. In his complaint Khan claims that “Arekar and Shaikh always joked with each other”. On September 29, Khan allegedly witnessed Arekar stuffing the air pipe into Shaikh’s anus with “pretend anger”, out of “fun”. “I immediately grabbed the pipe and switched off the air button,” he says in the FIR. “I called the company superiors and we took Shaikh to the hospital in the company car.”
When they received the news of the nature of the murder, Shaikh’s family was unable to fathom how an adult could attack another out of “fun”. Shaikh’s brother, Abdul Samad, says he demanded an explanation from the Toyota managers. “One general manager from the Worli branch told me that the trigger was mutton,” said Samad.
On September 29, Sheikh had returned to work after three days of leave for Bakri Eid, and he allegedly told his colleagues that he had eaten plenty of mutton. “According to the general manager, Arekar then ‘jokingly’ told Shaikh, ‘come, I’ll take out your mutton’, before he attacked,” said Samad. “I mentioned this to the police, but this bit was not eventually recorded in my formal statement.”
Both the police and the complainant, however, categorically deny this. “Arekar and Shaikh were teasing each other, but more through gestures – they didn’t speak to each other at all before this incident,” said Khan.
To Samad, this contradiction is irrelevant. “The mutton argument may or may not be true, I don’t know," he said. "But it is too small an issue to be a trigger for murder – those who killed my brother must have had bigger motives.”
Discrepancies
Based on the FIR, the police had arrested Arekar and booked him for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. Two other eye-witnesses present at the service centre that day have already recorded similar statements with the Kalachowki police, but the police did not share these with Scroll.
Shaikh’s family, however, points out several faults with this “official version”, which they claim is story “manufactured” by the company and being parroted by the police.
For one, the family believes it would have been impossible for just one man to pull down Shaikh’s pants and thrust a pipe up his rectum single-handedly. “My father was well-built and strong, so at least four to five people must have held him down to be able to do something like this,” said Shafia, who believes that the large, open room where Shaikh worked must surely have had many more eye-witnesses besides Khan and two others. “Why was only one man arrested, just because the company claims he confessed? Shouldn’t the police have detained everybody present at the time, for questioning?”
The family’s contention that Arekar wasn’t the only attacker is based on the doctors’ report which states that there were no external injuries on Shaikh’s body and that his pants and underwear were not torn, even though the pants appeared to have been loosened. Senior police inspector Dilip Ugale, however, denied this when questioned by Scroll. “The pipe was forced through Shaikh’s clothes, which were very much torn by the force,” he said.
The absence of footage from close-circuit cameras in the service centre is another reason that has led the family to suspect the company of covering up the truth. Of eight cameras stationed in different parts of the service centre, the two cameras that could have captured the scene of crime were not working, the company said. “It seems a pigeon sat on one of the cameras and changed its direction a few days before the incident,” said Ugale.
Police trouble
The Shaikh family has accused the police not only of shoddy investigation but also of being disrespectful.
“Right after the murder, the police didn’t even bother to cordon off the scene of crime to prevent people from tampering with evidence,” said Shafia. “When we first went to record our statements, the police didn’t let us speak – they told us to give everything in writing. Eventually they took our statements but they still haven’t taken our signatures on them and they haven’t given us a final, formal copy to look at.”
Inspector Ugale, however, dismissed both issues. “After Arekar was arrested, what evidence could we have collected from the scene?” he said. “And witnesses are not required to sign on their testimonies.”
When Shafia and her mother went to the police station on October 13, the women allege that Madhukar Sankhe, and Assistant Commissioner of Police, cast aspersions on Shaikh’s character in a crude manner. “He told my mother that my father must have been gay and must have liked anal sex, so he asked Arekar to insert the pipe into his anus,” said Shafia. While Sankhe could not be reached, Ugale denied this incident.
Compensation and demands
Shaikh, who had 30 years of experience in car repairs, had spent most of his life working in various Gulf countries before returning to India four years ago. He took up the job at Toyota’s Cotton Green service centre in November 2014, and was supposed to be made permanent in six months.
“But he was never made permanent and earned just Rs 7,000 as salary, in cash,” said his brother Samad. “He had confided to me that he was not happy with the job because of all the overtime and pressure, and he was planning to quit at the end of September.”
After Shaikh’s death, the family has still not received his September salary, and the company is not too keen on doling out compensation either. “Since he was a casual labourer not on the payroll, he is not really eligible for compensation,” said Cyril Dias, the manager of the service centre. “But we are thinking about it.”
Shaikh’s family and the fact-finding team are now taken their demands up to the city’s police commissioner, demanding a fresh investigation into the murder, a judicial probe and just compensation to the family.
On September 29, Mohammed Yakub Shaikh died almost instantly after a high-pressure air pipe was forcibly thrust into his rectum while he was at work. Shaikh, 48, was employed as a casual labourer at the Shinrai-Toyota Service Centre in Kalachowki in South Mumbai, where his job was to wash and dry serviced cars.
Yakub Shaikh.
According to the company’s version – also recorded in the First Information Report filed with the police – Shaikh was attacked by his colleague Santosh Arekar in a bout of “fun” and “teasing”, and his death was an accident.
Shaikh’s family, however, claims that he was attacked deliberately by more than one person, and that the attack could have been triggered by an argument Shaikh’s colleagues had with him about eating mutton during Bakri Eid.
The case of Shaikh’s murder was not widely reported in the media until local politicians from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen stepped in two weeks ago, highlighting the possibility that this could be a hate crime with communal motivations. The case then drew the attention of the Urdu press and a few Muslim community websites, while a group of eight independent activists – including Susan Abraham, Suresh Rajeshwar, Feroze Mithiborewala and Anthony Samy – set up a fact-finding team to answer the many questions raised by Shaikh’s family.
Was the murder of Yakub Shaikh a communal hate crime? At a press conference on Wednesday, the fact-finding committee alleged that it was. The police, the complainant and managers at Toyota claim it was merely a case of a prank gone wrong. The victim’s family, meanwhile, does not seem to care whether the alleged mention of Bakri Eid makes the murder communal or not.
“We just want justice, because we simply cannot believe this murder is the work of just one man,” said Shafia Shaikha, 22, Yakub Shaikh’s daughter. “Why aren’t the police investigating properly? Why are they so willing to accept the company’s version of events?”
The family and the fact-finding team have now demanded an independent judicial probe into the case.
The incident
On the afternoon of September 29, Shaikh’s wife Shehnaz Begum received a call from a Shinrai-Toyota employee telling her that her husband had vomited and collapsed after eating lunch at work. When the family reached KEM Hospital, they were met by four company employees even before they could locate Shaikh.
“They took my son aside and told him that his father had had a heart attack,” said Shehnaz Begum, speaking with Scroll at her one-room slum tenement at Shiv Nagar in Sewri. "The doctors said he was dead when they brought him in." When the family finally saw Shaikh’s body, they were stunned – every part of his body was “swollen like a balloon”, with his eyes bulging out abnormally. Suspecting foul play, they insisted on a post mortem.
At this point, more than 10 senior staff members of Toyota showed up at the hospital and told the family that Shaikh’s death was a murder by his colleague Santosh Arekar, who had inserted an air pipe emitting pressure of 140 pounds per square inch into his rectum, causing him to bloat up and perish within seconds. The preliminary post mortem report, which confirmed the death to be “unnatural”, states that Shaikh’s intestines, abdominal cavities and scrotal sac had burst due to “pulmonary air embolism”.
“When they gave us this news in the hospital, the company managers said that the man behind the attack had been arrested and an FIR had already been filed,” said Shaikh’s daughter Shafia. “How could they file an FIR without even informing the family first?”
The Shaikh family at the Sewri home.
The question of meat
The FIR was filed by Abdul Kadir Khan, an 18-year-old car washer who joined Shaikh’s team at Shinrai-Toyota just two months ago. In his complaint Khan claims that “Arekar and Shaikh always joked with each other”. On September 29, Khan allegedly witnessed Arekar stuffing the air pipe into Shaikh’s anus with “pretend anger”, out of “fun”. “I immediately grabbed the pipe and switched off the air button,” he says in the FIR. “I called the company superiors and we took Shaikh to the hospital in the company car.”
When they received the news of the nature of the murder, Shaikh’s family was unable to fathom how an adult could attack another out of “fun”. Shaikh’s brother, Abdul Samad, says he demanded an explanation from the Toyota managers. “One general manager from the Worli branch told me that the trigger was mutton,” said Samad.
On September 29, Sheikh had returned to work after three days of leave for Bakri Eid, and he allegedly told his colleagues that he had eaten plenty of mutton. “According to the general manager, Arekar then ‘jokingly’ told Shaikh, ‘come, I’ll take out your mutton’, before he attacked,” said Samad. “I mentioned this to the police, but this bit was not eventually recorded in my formal statement.”
Both the police and the complainant, however, categorically deny this. “Arekar and Shaikh were teasing each other, but more through gestures – they didn’t speak to each other at all before this incident,” said Khan.
To Samad, this contradiction is irrelevant. “The mutton argument may or may not be true, I don’t know," he said. "But it is too small an issue to be a trigger for murder – those who killed my brother must have had bigger motives.”
Discrepancies
Based on the FIR, the police had arrested Arekar and booked him for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. Two other eye-witnesses present at the service centre that day have already recorded similar statements with the Kalachowki police, but the police did not share these with Scroll.
Shaikh’s family, however, points out several faults with this “official version”, which they claim is story “manufactured” by the company and being parroted by the police.
For one, the family believes it would have been impossible for just one man to pull down Shaikh’s pants and thrust a pipe up his rectum single-handedly. “My father was well-built and strong, so at least four to five people must have held him down to be able to do something like this,” said Shafia, who believes that the large, open room where Shaikh worked must surely have had many more eye-witnesses besides Khan and two others. “Why was only one man arrested, just because the company claims he confessed? Shouldn’t the police have detained everybody present at the time, for questioning?”
The family’s contention that Arekar wasn’t the only attacker is based on the doctors’ report which states that there were no external injuries on Shaikh’s body and that his pants and underwear were not torn, even though the pants appeared to have been loosened. Senior police inspector Dilip Ugale, however, denied this when questioned by Scroll. “The pipe was forced through Shaikh’s clothes, which were very much torn by the force,” he said.
The absence of footage from close-circuit cameras in the service centre is another reason that has led the family to suspect the company of covering up the truth. Of eight cameras stationed in different parts of the service centre, the two cameras that could have captured the scene of crime were not working, the company said. “It seems a pigeon sat on one of the cameras and changed its direction a few days before the incident,” said Ugale.
Police trouble
The Shaikh family has accused the police not only of shoddy investigation but also of being disrespectful.
“Right after the murder, the police didn’t even bother to cordon off the scene of crime to prevent people from tampering with evidence,” said Shafia. “When we first went to record our statements, the police didn’t let us speak – they told us to give everything in writing. Eventually they took our statements but they still haven’t taken our signatures on them and they haven’t given us a final, formal copy to look at.”
Inspector Ugale, however, dismissed both issues. “After Arekar was arrested, what evidence could we have collected from the scene?” he said. “And witnesses are not required to sign on their testimonies.”
When Shafia and her mother went to the police station on October 13, the women allege that Madhukar Sankhe, and Assistant Commissioner of Police, cast aspersions on Shaikh’s character in a crude manner. “He told my mother that my father must have been gay and must have liked anal sex, so he asked Arekar to insert the pipe into his anus,” said Shafia. While Sankhe could not be reached, Ugale denied this incident.
Compensation and demands
Shaikh, who had 30 years of experience in car repairs, had spent most of his life working in various Gulf countries before returning to India four years ago. He took up the job at Toyota’s Cotton Green service centre in November 2014, and was supposed to be made permanent in six months.
“But he was never made permanent and earned just Rs 7,000 as salary, in cash,” said his brother Samad. “He had confided to me that he was not happy with the job because of all the overtime and pressure, and he was planning to quit at the end of September.”
After Shaikh’s death, the family has still not received his September salary, and the company is not too keen on doling out compensation either. “Since he was a casual labourer not on the payroll, he is not really eligible for compensation,” said Cyril Dias, the manager of the service centre. “But we are thinking about it.”
Shaikh’s family and the fact-finding team are now taken their demands up to the city’s police commissioner, demanding a fresh investigation into the murder, a judicial probe and just compensation to the family.
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