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| Hemini Mehta’s body outside a Mumbai hospital on Thursday. (Fotocorp) |
Mumbai, March 18: A retired customs officer upset with a neighbour held hostage the teenaged daughter of another, shot her dead and then fell to police bullets — the urban tragedy triggered apparently by “noise” associated with home renovation.
Harish Maroliya, 57, held the 14-year-old Hemini Mehta, a Class IX student, hostage for around 20 minutes this morning in West Andheri. He was killed in retaliatory fire by a police team that had come to rescue the girl but was greeted with a hail of bullets from her captor who had a licensed pistol.
Maroliya, who took voluntary retirement from the customs and excise department and was a practising lawyer, lived on a third-floor flat (B-37) at the Saujanya housing society in suburban Andheri West.
His wife was inside the flat when the shootout unfolded. One of his two daughters is married while the other was away at work. Society residents, who described Maroliya as grumpy and unfriendly, said the retired officer was upset by noise created by the ongoing renovation at the fourth floor flat B-45, directly above his, belonging to A.N. Dalal.
Police echoed the neighbours. “Maroliya was angry about the noise in that house,” additional commissioner of police Amitabh Gupta said.
Around 11am, Maroliya went to the ground-floor entrance of the society and stopped two workers carrying out the renovation from entering the building. A woman resident was also stopped, leading to an altercation.
“Maroliya had not lodged any complaint with the society regarding the renovation. He was always known as an unstable, uncooperative resident who did not really talk to anyone. When the lady came to me with the complaint, I went down and tried to reason with him. We had no idea he was carrying a pistol,” said housing society secretary Deepak Patni.
As the argument raged, Maroliya whipped out his pistol and fired two rounds in the air.
Just then, Hemini, a Class IX student of AH Wadia High School and a neighbour of the Dalals on the fourth floor, returned after an exam.
The neighbours requested Maroliya to allow the teenager, with whose family he had no dispute, to go home. But Maroliya grabbed her and dragged the girl to his flat. “Some neighbours tried to intervene but he fired again and locked himself inside,” officer Gupta said.
Panic calls from the neighbours prompted the police to send a combat vehicle. The police team tried to persuade Maroliya to release the girl, but he did not respond.
An assistant commissioner, Dilip Suryavanshi, also tried to negotiate. When they heard gunshots from inside, the police broke open the front door and dashed in.
They saw the girl on the floor with a bullet wound. Maroliya fired again, injuring police sub-inspector Vaibhav Patil and constable Phalke. In retaliation, the police opened fire, hitting him.
Maroliya and the girl were rushed to a hospital nearby where they were declared dead.
“I met Maroliya around 9.30am near a temple. He looked perfectly normal. I wished him good morning, and since he was a practising lawyer, I asked him when the summer vacations for the court would start,” said a neighbour.