Mumbai: The Pune man arrested for allegedly passing out pills filled with zinc phosphide at a Muharram procession last week had destroyed some of the poison he had ordered online, said police.The probe has shown that the suspect, Fayyaz Premji (39), had ordered 30,000 capsules and 50kg of zinc phosphide, often used as rat poison, from an online platform. It isn’t clear how much of it was destroyed. A team is working on the order’s digital trail. “A letter seeking his account statement has been sent to his bank,” said a police officer. Police had seized 14,900 capsules filled with the poison from Premji and are awaiting a chemical analysis report.The motive behind the mass poisoning plot is yet to be ascertained.The officer said Premji appeared to be “disturbed” and claimed that some people from the Khoja Shia community, to which he belonged, had “made his life miserable”. “His wife left him in 2016-17 and moved in with her parents. The couple had no children. His brother’s wife too left the marital home. Premji’s two sisters—an accountant and a physiotherapist—are settled in Iran, along with their mother. The two brothers and their father stayed in Pune.” Premji contested and lost an election within his community in 2015, said the officer. “He claimed that some people used to harass his grandfather as well.”A community leader said he initially questioned many religious practices, but over time, he turned more “destructive”. A leader of Khoja Shia Isnaashri Jamaat in Mumbai said Premji led a campaign against some long-held customs and revered figures in the community. “He began a campaign against Maulana Ahmed Ali Abdi, who is a representative of our Iraq-based marja (a very senior cleric) and spiritual head Agha Syed Ali Sistani in India. He said instead of self-flagellation, Shias should donate blood on Ashura. We do hold blood donation camps, but cannot abolish rituals.”A court on Monday extended Premji’s police custody till July 4.Habib Hospital in Dongri said four persons who had taken ill after consuming the pills are recovering. Javed Shroff, chairman of the hospital trust, said the patients are out of danger.
