Day after Borivali ‘live’ shocker, a cremation and a delayed burial as Oppn. guns for Fadnavis

Shiv Sena leader's murder during Facebook Live leads to arrests, opposition demands resignation, police investigate motive.

A day after the shocking murder of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Abhishek Ghosalkar during a ‘Facebook Live’ by a local ‘social activist’ Mauris Noronha, who also ended his own life, Mumbai Crime Branch officers on Friday arrested the assailant’s bodyguard, Amarendra Mishra, whose gun was allegedly used in the incident.

It is the second arrest in the case. Earlier in the day, the police arrested a man named Mehul Parikh, who was present at the crime scene when the victim was fatally shot.

The arrests took place even as the Opposition parties decried the “lawlessness” in the State, where a week ago, in Thane, an MLA opened fire at a local Shiv Sena leader and one more person inside a police station. Shiv Sena (UBT) and Congress leaders demanded the resignation of Deputy Chief Minister and State Home Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who refuted the Opposition’s allegations and ascribed Ghosalkar’s murder to “personal rivalry”.

The police are still piecing together the events that led Noronha to call former councillor Ghosalkar for a Facebook livestreaming event at his office in Borivali’s IC Colony on Thursday evening and kill him. However, what has emerged from the statements collected from Noronha’s family and friends is that the accused had nursed a long-standing grudge against the former councillor and had vowed to kill him, a senior officer said.

“Mauris had received a notice from the owner regarding his rented office space where the crime occurred. He had defaulted on rent payments for the past six months and had been asked to vacate the premises by March 11,” the officer added.

Mauris had recently returned to Mumbai from abroad and had aspirations to contest in the upcoming civic elections against Ghosalkar, the officer also said.

Not only did Noronha consider Ghosalkar his political rival, he also believed that the former councillor had implicated him in a rape case, for which the accused spent five months in prison and for which his wife had divorced him. He was out on bail.