The Lokhandwala Bathroom Murder: Bollywood, Borrowed Names And A Suicide Note Waiting In A Bank Locker

A scream tore through Mumbai's Lokhandwala on the night of April 7, 2012.

From a parking lot below Samarth Aangan apartment, Harangad Singh Maini looked up and saw an elderly man fighting for his life. A heavily built attacker was repeatedly stabbing him as he leaned out of a first-floor window, crying for help.

Then the curtain rod snapped. The man disappeared inside.

Maini alerted the guards and rushed upstairs. A shirtless stranger opened the door and coolly claimed there had been a fight, but everything was under control. Blood on his chest and stomach suggested otherwise.

When Maini asked about the elderly man, the stranger said he was sleeping in another room. He claimed that he and a second man inside the flat were paying guests. The apartment, he said, belonged to actor Anuj Tikku and had been rented to them for Rs 30,000.

Maini stepped inside.

Another man stood in the apartment with blood on his feet. Blood stained sections of the floor. When Maini tried to move towards the bathroom, the two strangers shoved him out.

The guards locked the flat from the outside and dialled 100. They stood watch until police arrived nearly half an hour later.

But the killers were no longer inside.

They had smashed the bathroom window and escaped.

A Body In The Bathroom, A Son Missing

Officers entered a flat that looked as if it had been torn apart. The refrigerator had toppled over. Mattresses, furniture and belongings were scattered across the rooms. Blood marked the floor and walls.

Inside the bathroom lay the elderly man.

He had been stabbed multiple times. A computer wire had been wrapped tightly around his neck. The broken window above him revealed the killers' escape route.

Nobody in the building recognised the victim.

Police searched his clothes and found a mobile phone. The last call had been made to actor Anuj Tikku.

Repeated calls to Anuj went unanswered.

The dead man was soon identified as Arun Tikku, Anuj's father.

Now the police had a body, two missing killers and a missing son.

Arun had travelled from Delhi to Mumbai to meet Anuj and examine documents connected to the rental of one of his apartments. He was supposed to return home the following morning.

Instead, he had been slaughtered inside his son's flat.

As the hours passed without any trace of Anuj, investigators began to suspect him. A murdered father and a vanished son were too closely connected to ignore.

Police turned to call-detail records.

Anuj's phone led them away from Mumbai and towards Chiplun, near Goa. He was detained on April 10 along with his friend Karan Sood.

It was only after police took him into custody that Anuj learnt his father was dead.

"I fainted. My face had turned completely white. Darkness enveloped me, something I had never experienced in my life. One side of my body went numb. There was so much fear, I was trembling," he later recalled.

Anuj insisted he had left Mumbai with Karan for Goa. He claimed he had no idea what had happened inside the apartment after his departure.

Investigators began questioning both men. Then Karan Sood's identity collapsed.

The Wealthy Hotelier Who Never Existed

Karan Sood was not a wealthy hotelier with properties overseas. He was not even Karan Sood.

Police identified him as Vijay Palande, a convicted murderer wanted in several criminal cases.

The discovery opened a door into a world of manufactured identities and carefully staged friendships.

Anuj had been told that Karan owned hotels in Spain and travelled abroad frequently. He presented himself as sophisticated, prosperous and generous.

The aspiring actress who brought them together had called herself Simran Sood.

Police said she was actually Seema Dusanjh, Palande's wife. Anuj had allegedly been told she was Palande's sister.

He had known neither of them by their real identities.

Anuj said he first met Simran in 2010 during a dubbing session.

"In 2010, about two years before murder, I met Simran. I had gone to a studio for dubbing. Music director Jaan Nisar was my friend there. Simran had also come there to get an album cut. My director friend introduced me to Simran," he recalled.

The friendship grew gradually. Simran visited his home and borrowed his books, CDs and videos. Anuj occasionally went to her house. In Bollywood, where actors, producers and directors constantly met new people, the connection did not appear unusual.

Then Simran introduced him to Karan.

"Once I went to Simran's house. There, Simran introduced me to Vijay Palande by the name of Karan Sood, saying that he is my brother, he is in the hotel business, he has hotels in Spain, he travels abroad frequently," Anuj said.

"I later found out that he was Vijay Palande, after my father had already been murdered. The police told me that he is Vijay Palande and a convicted murderer."

Palande allegedly worked hard to appear harmless. He shook Anuj's hand, spoke warmly and once gave him four bottles of whisky before announcing that he was leaving for London.

"If I introduce you to Karan Sood, you would say he is a very good and noble person," Anuj recalled. "He presented himself in a very friendly manner, because of which I didn't doubt him at all."

By then, Palande was allegedly moving closer to Anuj's properties.

A woman was introduced as a prospective tenant for his vacant flats. Renovation work was arranged through two men named Dhananjay Shinde and Manoj Gajkosh. Every new connection appeared helpful. Every step seemed ordinary.

Police alleged it was all part of a trap.

Arun Was Never The Original Target

After questioning Anuj extensively, investigators cleared him of involvement in his father's murder and declared him a government witness.

Their theory of the crime was far more disturbing.

Arun Tikku, police claimed, had never been the original target. Anuj was.

According to investigators, Simran deliberately befriended the actor and slowly brought Palande into his life under a false identity. The alleged plan was to obtain Anuj's signatures on property documents, take him to Goa, murder him and seize control of his flats and other assets.

Anuj's trusting nature, struggling film career and limited social circle had allegedly made him vulnerable.

Then Arun arrived in Mumbai.

Police alleged that Arun was careful with paperwork and had begun examining documents connected to the supposed tenants. His presence threatened to expose the conspiracy.

The plan allegedly changed.

Anuj was taken out of Mumbai towards Goa. Arun was left behind in the apartment with the men posing as paying guests.

Shortly before midnight, his screams reached the parking lot below.

But the most chilling piece of the alleged conspiracy had not been found at the murder scene.

It was hidden inside Palande's bank locker.

The Suicide Note Inside The Bank Locker

During a search, investigators discovered a purported suicide note in Anuj's handwriting and carrying his signature.

"I, Anuj Tiku, am not happy with my life and I want to leave my body and go towards moksha. Nobody should be responsible for my death," it read.

Police alleged that the note was meant to surface after Anuj's murder, making it appear that he had taken his own life. With Anuj dead and Arun removed, the properties could allegedly be seized without either man standing in the way.

Anuj denied writing the note willingly.

He claimed Palande and his associates had mixed a narcotic substance into his beer and forced him to write while he was intoxicated.

"One day they made me drink beer, in which a narcotic drug was mixed. I never vomit after drinking beer, but that day I vomited, even though I hadn't drunk more than half a bottle," he said.

"And they made me write that letter by holding my hand while I was intoxicated."

Then he raised the question at the heart of the discovery.

"If someone truly depressed wrote a suicide note, it would be lying somewhere in the room. Why would it be found in a bank locker?"

The Night Anuj Slept Among The Bloodstains

When police finished questioning him, Anuj returned to the apartment where his father had been murdered.

The crime scene was still waiting for him.

The refrigerator remained overturned. Mattresses were scattered across the rooms. Sofas lay upside down. Broken tiles covered the bathroom. Blood remained on the floor and spattered across the walls.

The sight was so horrifying that the policeman sent with him reportedly ran away.

Anuj stayed. "I slept in that very crime scene at night," he later said.

Crime journalist Vivek Agarwal, who covered the investigation in 2012, recalled that Anuj was in no condition to properly answer police questions.

"Anuj's condition was so bad that he couldn't even talk properly to the police. Anuj was a very simple kind of boy. He didn't have friends in his world. He wasn't the kind of person who would make friends with someone in two minutes," Agarwal said.

"His mental state could be easily manipulated. You couldn't call him street-smart or very worldly. His father, Mr Tikku, knew this, although he lived in Delhi."

Anuj had come to Mumbai hoping to become an actor. But his connections in the film industry were weak, and work was limited.

"The rule of the film industry is: the more people, the more possibilities," Agarwal said. "Anuj lacked this, which is why he got less work."

The same isolation that held back Anuj's career may also have made the sudden arrival of new friends appear more convincing.

Police alleged that Palande and his associates did not simply force their way into Anuj's life. They studied it, entered it gradually and turned his need for companionship and professional connections against him.

Fourteen Years Later, The Fight Is Not Over

Palande was convicted of the murder of Arun Tikku and remains in prison. Dhananjay Shinde and Manoj Gajkosh are also in jail. Simran was released after serving three years.

But more than a decade later, Anuj does not believe the case has reached its final end.

"I am happy that Ujjwal Nigam has been fighting our case for 14 years. He is demanding the death penalty," he said.

"I hope Vijay Palande gets the death penalty, and only then will I feel that my father has received justice."

Agarwal said the case was bigger than the murder committed inside the Lokhandwala bathroom.

"This entire matter is an example of a well-planned conspiracy, in which the weaknesses of the system are also clearly visible," he said.

"The most tragic aspect is that despite so much evidence, witnesses and documentation, Mr Tikku and Anuj Tikku have not received complete justice even after years. This case is not just a murder mystery, but also raises a big question mark on our system."

Arun Tikku was not the only victim linked to Vijay Palande.

The convicted killer was also found guilty in the murder of aspiring film producer Karan Kakkar, another man allegedly pulled into his circle through friendship, false promises and the lure of Bollywood.

Kakkar believed he was moving closer to his dream of producing films. Instead, police said, he was walking into another carefully constructed trap.