AGNELO PEREIRA
THE GOAN | MAPUSA
Calangute Police may have arrested the woman they believe is responsible for the death of Udupi entrepreneur Sandeep Salaim, but a week after his body was found inside a Calangute resort room, police appear to have solved only part of the mystery.
Their version is straightforward.
A woman allegedly befriended the businessman, took him to a hotel room, mixed sleeping pills in his drink, waited for him to lose consciousness, stole his gold chain and fled Goa.
Police insist it was a robbery gone wrong.
But beneath that neat sequence lies a series of unanswered questions – questions that even police admit can only be answered once the forensic report arrives.
And those questions are beginning to cast a shadow over what appeared to be an open-and-shut case.
The missing evidence
Perhaps the biggest contradiction is this. Police claim the accused confessed to administering sleeping pills to Salaim. Yet police have recovered no sleeping tablets, no empty strips, no prescription and no trace of the alleged drug. The only basis for the theory, at present, is the accused's own alleged disclosure.
If sleeping pills caused the death, where is the evidence? If they did not, then what exactly killed the 42-year-old businessman?
Senior police officers themselves concede they do not yet have the answer.
"The exact cause will be known only after the viscera report is received," an investigating officer admitted.
One report can rewrite case
Ironically, the most crucial piece of evidence has still not reached the forensic laboratory.
Medical sources confirmed that the victim's viscera, preserved after the post-mortem examination, is yet to be dispatched for toxicological analysis.
Until that report is available, investigators cannot scientifically establish whether Salaim died because of sedatives, another intoxicating substance, a medical condition triggered by drugs, or an entirely different cause.
Was he chosen randomly?
Police maintain the accused acted entirely alone. No accomplices. No handlers. No insider.
A "one-person army", as one senior officer described her.
But that explanation is raising eyebrows among people familiar with Goa's casino circuit.
Sources told The Goan that affluent patrons visiting casinos are often closely observed because they are perceived to be carrying large amounts of money.
One source questioned whether the accused could repeatedly identify wealthy targets without receiving information from someone with knowledge of casino clientele.
"There is every possibility that somebody may have tipped her off about who had money," the source claimed.
Police, however, say they have found no evidence of any wider network.
More victims, but only one death
Police have also disclosed that the woman is suspected to have targeted several casino visitors in the past using a similar modus operandi.
In those cases, police believe valuables were stolen after victims were incapacitated.
None of those alleged victims died.
Why, then, did this encounter end in death? That is another question police cannot presently answer.
Medical experts say numerous possibilities remain open until toxicology findings become available.
According to one medical source, whenever two adults voluntarily enter a hotel room together, investigators must examine every medical possibility instead of focusing solely on one theory.
"The toxicology report alone will establish what substances were present in the body," the source said.
The theory and evidence
Police say the accused's intention was never murder.
Their case is that robbery was the sole motive and death was an unintended consequence.
They have recovered the gold chain, which they say strengthens that theory.
Yet police are simultaneously awaiting the very forensic report that will determine whether the alleged sleeping pills actually caused the death at all.
Until then, the central pillar of the prosecution's case remains scientifically unverified.
A CASE FAR FROM OVER
The arrest may have brought the investigation its first breakthrough, but it has not brought closure.
Instead, it has opened a fresh set of questions.
What exactly entered the victim's system? Was he deliberately targeted? Did the accused truly work alone?
And most importantly – Did Sandeep Salaim die because of a failed robbery, or is there another chapter in this story that has yet to be uncovered?
For now, those answers lie not in the police case diary, but in a sealed vial of viscera waiting to be examined.
