India Untold: How a laundry tag cracked Mumbai's first quadruple murder — and made a legend of its ‘Sherlock Holmes’

synopsis

Choonawala family pic, and 2 accused

Image Credit: X

On the quiet morning of October 23, 1967, an eerie silence hung over the usually bustling ‘Temple View’ building on Hughes Road in the Gamdevi area of Bombay (now Mumbai). 

What began as a routine milk delivery would soon unravel into the city’s first recorded quadruple murder—a case that stunned Bombay and showcased the brilliance of a man dubbed the “Sherlock Holmes” of the Bombay Police: Deputy Commissioner Vaidyanath Someshwar Sami.

The victims—Muhamed Siddique Choonawala, a prominent businessman and Managing Director of M/S Car Mart, his wife Roshan, their four-year-old grandson Shajitkhan, and house help Annie Fernandes—were found brutally stabbed to death, their bodies covered with newspapers and clothes. It was a gruesome scene, compounded by the perpetrators’ attempt to destroy evidence using fire and an open gas connection.

But even in this chaos, it was a set of seemingly innocuous clues—laundry marks on scorched garments—that opened the path to justice.

The discovery: A silence too loud

On that morning, a milkman arrived at the Choonawala residence, knocked multiple times, and left the milk with a neighbor after getting no response. Later, Usman, a watchman at Car Mart, also tried to deliver milk bottles but met with the same silence.

Cook Sayed Ahmed, who had spent the night in the common passage outside the flat, was roused by an unusual sight, smoke leaking from the windows. Upon entering with Usman, they saw a small fire near the kitchen, newspapers and clothes burning in the passage. Buckets of water doused the flames, but what lay beneath was horrifying: human limbs, charred and motionless.

Usman ran to the nearby Gamdevi Police Station, alerting PSI Shivaji Deshmukh, who rushed to the scene. Inside, police found four bodies—stabbed repeatedly. The flat was ransacked, the gas pipe in the kitchen deliberately loosened, and valuables missing. An apparent robbery, but one cloaked in chilling brutality.

The case deepens: Calling in a legend

As the gruesome discovery made headlines and panic spread through the neighborhood, the local police struggled to find leads. With the city under curfew and public pressure mounting, Gamdevi Police turned to a man known for his dogged determination and razor-sharp intuition: DCP Vaidyanath Sami.

Born in 1908 in Bombay, Sami came from a family that once enjoyed status but had fallen on hard times. Despite humble beginnings, working odd jobs as a theatre screen puller and insurance agent, he joined the police force in 1931. His talents were quickly recognized, and by 1939, he was inducted into the elite Crime Investigation Department (CID).

Now, with over three decades of service behind him, he was nearing retirement—but this case would become one of his crowning achievements.

The turning point: Laundry marks and intuition

While scouring the flat for clues, Sami’s officers found something curious — a blood-stained shirt under the bed with a partially torn laundry mark: “AI Z”. Another cloth bore “AI SBH”. This didn’t match the “J MSC” mark found on all the family’s personal laundry, indicating these items likely belonged to the assailants.

Realizing the importance of this detail, Inspector Vakatkar was tasked with tracing the marks. He painstakingly visited twelve laundries across the city until he struck gold: the American Express Laundry in Khetwadi. The proprietor, Shenolikar, confirmed that both “AI Z” and “AI SBH” marks came from his laundry and belonged to two local customers—both residing in the area.

That same evening, police arrested Sayed Bakar Hussain and his cousin Sayed Ali Asad on Khetwadi back road. The pair soon confessed.

The motive: Dues, resentment, and rage

The motive was personal and pecuniary. Hussain, once Choonawala’s driver, had been dismissed from service. He believed he was still owed money for overtime work — an assertion Choonawala denied. The disagreement escalated during a visit by Hussain and Asad to the flat. In a fit of rage and resentment, the cousins murdered the family.

Attempting to erase their identity, they tried to destroy the bloodied clothes, even cutting away the laundry marks. They scattered newspapers, opened the gas valve, and lit fires in a desperate attempt to fake an accidental death scene.

But they missed a few fragments. The laundry tags—partially cut but still readable—led the law straight to them.

A swift trial, a historic verdict

Within less than two weeks, the Bombay Police CID had cracked the case. Forensic fingerprint analysis matched the accused to the crime scene. They were found guilty of murder, robbery, and criminal conspiracy. On November 4, 1968, both were sentenced to death by the principal sessions court—marking a swift and decisive end to one of Bombay’s most harrowing criminal sagas.

The man behind the method: DCP Vaidyanath Sami

Vaidyanath Sami’s role in this case was not an anomaly but a hallmark of his distinguished career. From the Turf Soda Factory murder to the Lloyd Bank robbery, Sami approached every investigation with a mixture of intuition, legwork, and scientific inquiry.

He rejected the use of torture, instead relying on informants, forensic analysis, and what he called “the sixth sense”— a detective’s gut feeling sharpened through years of patient observation.

Sami often visited tea stalls and salons in the bylanes of Bombay to pick up whispers, rumors, and obscure tips that others missed. He was, by all accounts, relentless in his pursuit of truth but never brutal. His reputation inspired respect, even among his peers.

“He believed an investigation was like a hunt requiring deep patience,” noted Vikram Kumar Jha in The Queen of Indian Pop, the authorized biography of Sami’s daughter, singer Usha Uthup.

Sami retired soon after solving the Choonawala case, leaving behind a legacy of excellence in detective work and a blueprint for ethical policing in India.

Epilogue: An enduring legacy

Today, over five decades later, the Choonawala murder case stands as a seminal moment in Mumbai’s crime history—not only for its grisly nature but also for how it was solved. 

A set of burned clothes and a nearly missed laundry tag became the fulcrum upon which justice turned.

In an age before DNA analysis and digital forensics, it was the keen eyes and investigative brilliance of officers like Vaidyanath Sami that cracked the most complex cases. His story remains a powerful reminder that sometimes, it’s not the dramatic chase but the quiet detail—the laundry mark—that leads you to the truth.

And that is what made Bombay’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ a legend in the annals of Indian policing.