The Thane police have arrested a 33-year-old man from New Delhi for allegedly killing a neighbour in Diva township here.
The 40-year-old victim, a habitual drinker who was unemployed, used to have frequent quarrels with his wife and would also beat her up at their house in B R Nagar of Diva, Deputy Commissioner of Police (zone-I) Dr D S Swami said.
His wife became friends with the accused, who lived in their neighbourhood.
Later, the victim and his wife shifted to a house on Diva Shil Road and the accused also came to temporarily stay with them, he said.
On September 4, the victim’s wife along with their child went to her parent’s home at Dombivili in Thane.
In her absence, on September 8, the accused offered liquor to the victim and when the latter was heavily drunk, he allegedly strangulated him to death with a towel and fled, the police official said.
The care-taker of the house found the victim dead the next day and informed the police.
Subsequently, the Mumbra police registered a case under IPC section 302 (murder), the DCP said.
The police found the Aadhaar card of the accused in the house and suspecting his hand in the killing, they started a search for him.
The police then got a tip-off that the accused had fled to New Delhi, Swami said.
In the hideout, the accused kept changing his mobile phone SIM cards. A few days back, he made a call to his wife which the police tracked and finally zeroed-in on him at a slum in the national capital and brought him to Thane on September 25, he said.
The police official said that during interrogation, the accused admitted to have killed the victim.
The accused was formally placed under arrest on Tuesday and yesterday produced before a local magistrate who remanded him in police custody till October 3, the police official added.