Questions remain a year after journalist J Dey's murder

A year ago on a rainy Saturday afternoon, veteran crime journalist J Dey was shot and killed in broad daylight in the eastern suburb of Powai while riding his motorcycle. The murder of Dey, the head of investigative reporting in newspaper Mid-Day, was perhaps the first time a journalist of a prominent news outlet had ever been murdered in Mumbai and that too without any warnings. First came the theories ranging from the oil mafia to the underworld targeting Dey for intruding a bit too much into their affairs and antagonising his sources. Resisting calls for a CBI probe, the state government kept its faith in the Crime Branch of the Mumbai police which took a little over a fortnight to arrest seven persons for their alleged involvement in the murder. [caption id=“attachment_339707” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Today marks one day since the murder of senior journalist J Dey in Mumbai. Screen grab from CNN IBN”]  [/caption] “The murder was planned by Rohit Thangapani alias Satish Kalya at the behest of Chhota Rajan. Kalya is a known shooter of Rajan gang and has worked for him earlier too,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Himanshu Roy told reporters at a press conference after the arrests. The police remained mysteriously silent on the motive for the murder even as they continued probing why a gangster whom Dey was in touch with through sources would order his killing. Three more people were subsequently arrested but the most sensational one was the arrest of Asian Age journalist Jigna Vora. Vora, once a colleague of Dey’s, was accused of wanting Dey killed due to personal rivalry. Police said she had provided gangsters with information leading to Dey’s murder and had been in connivance with Chhota Rajan. And the motive for the murder, according to the Mumbai police?  The gangster was allegedly enraged by Dey’s reports against him and convinced by Vora’s allegations that the senior journalist was colluding with a rival, paid his henchmen to have Dey killed. As implausible as the theory sounded, the police said they had sufficient evidence against Vora and the ten others. Investigators said they had data from Vora’s email accounts, messages on her phone and other data. All 11 have been charged under stringent provisions of the Mahrashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and could face anywhere between a year and life imprisonment for their involvement in the murder. The police has filed two chargesheets:  one against the ten arrested in the case and the other against Vora. Chhota Rajan alias Rajan Nikhalje and a henchman remain as wanted accused in the case, a matter unlikely to trouble the duo too much given the number of cases they are accused in, and given that the current location of the gangster officially remains unknown. But as Tehelka pointed out in a detailed article about investigations in the case, while the police has circulated many theories on the murder of Dey , few of them have been particularly substantiated with evidence. And as Indian Express reported today, crime branch officials are ’not hopeful’ of getting too much from the Forensic Science Laboratory reports though they attribute it to the fact that they seized it too late. However, later in the day a more optimistic crime branch official told PTI, “The forensic reports will further strengthen the case and not contradict the evidence we gathered earlier.” For an investigation that has been viewed with skepticism since the beginning, one can only hope that the optimistic crime branch official is proved right failing which .