Nagpur: Nearly four weeks after a 21-year-old food delivery executive was killed in a hit-and-run accident near Faras Chowk on Nagpur-Saoner Road, Mankapur police have arrested the driver responsible by analysing mobile phone location data after repeated attempts to identify the vehicle through CCTV footage failed.
Aman Kumar Dahare, a resident of Hazaripahad, was riding his moped to pick up a food parcel at around 2.40am on Sept 1 when a speeding white car travelling from Mankapur Road towards Koradi struck him and fled the scene. Police subsequently traced the accused, identified as Akshay Kadu (23), a resident of Veltur village in Saoner tehsil.
Senior Inspector Harish Kalsekar of Mankapur police station said the accused had removed the vehicle’s number plate before the accident, making identification through CCTV cameras nearly impossible. “We examined footage from more than 100 CCTV cameras covering a stretch of four to five kilometres on either side of the accident spot, but the vehicle’s registration number was never visible,” Kalsekar said. The breakthrough comes amid persistent challenges faced by city police in solving hit-and-run cases, many of which remain undetected, leaving victims’ families waiting for justice. Dahare sustained severe head injuries and later succumbed at Mayo Hospital. Since the accident, his mother had reportedly been visiting the police station almost daily, seeking updates and expressing fears that her son may have been murdered. With CCTV leads exhausted, police turned to technical surveillance and analysed mobile phone location data. They obtained call detail records from mobile towers near both the hospital and the accident site and compared the numbers active at the two locations around the time of the crash. Investigators found that he had reportedly sent the damaged car to an automobile workshop in Dahegaon Rangari for repairs. He was taken into custody and allegedly confessed to the crime during interrogation.
The vehicle has been seized, and further investigation is underway.