Mumbai, March 4 (MD): A porter at Kurla's Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) detained by the Kurla Government Railway Police (GRP) for questioning in connection with the Esther Anuhya murder case has turned out to be their saviour.

Pramod Thomre, who was grilled by cops, identified the prime murder suspect. During investigation of the case, the police had rounded up around 100 porters and local vendors for questioning.

The only clue they had was grabs from the CCTV footage showing a moustached man carrying Esther's bag and walking in front of her.

Thomre also called Pamya identified the man as Chandrakant Sanap, a former porter. The Kurla GRP officials were shocked at the revelation. "I immediately recognised him; he used to work with us around six years back. Some two years ago, he sold his porter's badge and left Mumbai.

I was in touch with him through some other colleagues and at that time, he was putting up at Kanjurmarg," Pamya told mid-day exclusively.

Fishing him out

Realising that the crime scene and the place where Sanap stayed were close by, the police started searching for him, but failed to get leads. Pamya then started investigating on his own.

"I gathered information about him and got to know that his native place was Nashik. I immediately passed on the message to the GRP official, who assigned a special team to nab Sanap," added Pamya.

The Kurla GRP caught Sanap six days ago, but since they didn't have his call detail records (CDR) on the day of the crime, they let him go. Shivaji Dhumal, senior police inspector, Kurla GRP, said, "We had asked the Kanjurmarg police to give us his call records.

But when we didn't get any response, we couldn't arrest him. We only asked him to report to us every day." Later, he was handed over to the Crime Branch for questioning. An officer from the Kurla GRP said, "Pamya passed on important details that helped us reach Sanap."