Psychopath killed 14 members of his family.
By Dileep Thekkethil
The midnight horror that killed 14 of her family members, including her four-month-old daughter, still lingers in the mind of Sobiya Bharmal, the sole survivor of the Thane massacre.
Sobiya witnessed her brother, Hasnain Warekar, a chartered accountant who is believed to be a psychopath, taking the lives of everyone in her family who came to attend a party at the latter’s house.
Sobiya survived as she refused a spiked drink that the rest of the rest of the family was sedated with, before Warekar murdered them. Warekar was unaware of the fact that his sister didn’t have the drink.
According to police, the lone survivor of the massacre was inconsolable when they reached the hospital for registering her statement. They also added that she was witness to the cold-blooded murder of her daughter.
Initially, the police tried to console Sobiya telling her that her daughter Alfiya was alive but with anger she retorted, “‘Don’t try to fool me. I know everyone is dead. I saw the incident with my own eyes and not a single person is alive.”
The Warekar family often came together for a weekend daawat at the place of the accused. According to police, the accused sent an auto to his sister’s place to pick Sobiya, her child and her husband up for the gathering.
Fortunately, Sobiya’s husband Sozab said he will join them the next day but what awaited him in the morning was the spine-chilling news about what had befallen his daughter and the family.
According to the statement given by Sobiya, the family had a nice evening, feasting on chicken and kebabs. It was then that Warekar’s wife Jabin offered them cool drinks, which she apparently didn’t know was sedated. The family, except Sobiya, relished the drink which knocked them unconscious in the night.
A police officer was quoted by The Mid-Day saying “But she was awake and she saw her brother slitting the victim’ throats.”
Investigating officers are of the assumption that the killer didn’t know that Sobiya was in her senses, not having taken the spiked drink. If he did, Sobiya would have been the first to be targeted.
Warekar, unknowing that his sister was awake, started murdering his family members who were sleeping unconsciously in the first floor and later ran down the steps to continue slitting the throats of other members of the family.
Hasnain after killing the four-month-old moved towards Sobiya, but she resisted and managed to close herself up inside a room, but not before he managed to gash her throat.
She then cried out “Mujhe bachao, muje bachao! Bhai jaan ne sab ko maar daala, wo mujhe bhi maar dalega, bachao!” (Help Me, Help Me! My brother has murdered everyone, he is going to kill me too, Help!)
A neighbor was quoted by Mid-Day saying “I was asleep when I heard the scream, so I thought it was in my dream. But when I heard the scream again, I woke my son, Altamash, up. It was 3.30 am at the time.”
“I saw two dead bodies in a pool of blood. I also saw that Hasnain had hanged himself. I began knocking on the neighbors doors – most of them are relatives – to warn them,” recalled Altamash.
Even as the neighbors tried to convince Sobiya to open the doors, she relented as she was totally under fear after what she witnessed. Later, she opened the window and the neighbors were able to cut the grills and rescue her from the house. By then, after the murders, Warekar had committed suicide.
“We were banging on the door but she was scared and would not open the door. We assured her that we were her neighbors, but she still refused. When she finally opened the sliding window, we cut the grille, pulled her out and took her to Titan Hospital,” added Altamash.
On the way to the hospital, Sobiya told the neighbors what happened on the fateful night that cost her the life of close relatives, including her daughter.
“I was asleep when I saw Hasnain killing my sister with a sharp knife on the throat. He slit my daughter’s throat too. I saw what was happening, but couldn’t react,” she said to a neighbor.
According to reports, Hasnain Warekar, an assistant to a Chartered Accountant at a Navi Mumbai firm earned over Rs. 80,000 ($1172) a month.
On the same day, a camera person, who had a history of heart problems, suffered a heart attack while covering the murders of the 14 members of the family, and died soon after.