Model Simran Sood gets bail in Kakkad and Tikku murder cases

A sessions court here today granted bail to Simran Sood, small time model and wife of arrested gangster Vijay Palande, in two murder cases. However, Sood cannot be released from jail as she is in custody in a fake passport case. "Sood has been granted bail in the last year's murder cases of aspiring producer Karan Kumar Kakkad and Delhi-based businessman Arun Kumar Tikku and we will apply for bail in the fake passport case in a day or two," her lawyer C R Mishra said. The court granted her bail on the surety of Rs 1 lakh in the Tikku case and Rs 50,000 in the Kakkad case. The court also directed Sood not to leave Mumbai, Mishra said. Sood and Palande had befriended Kakkad to allegedly grab his property. Palande had later come to know that Kakkad was into cricket betting and had lost Rs 2 crore. Thereafter, he and others hatched a conspiracy to eliminate him and usurp his property, police said. When police arrested Palande in the murder case of Delhi- based businessman Arunkumar Tikku, he revealed that he had also killed Kakkad. According to police, Palande, had become friends with Anuj, son of the Tikku a couple of years ago. He had plans to takeover the three flats-clubbed into one. The flats were in Anuj's name. However, Palande saw the plan failing when Arun flew down to Mumbai from Delhi and evicted Dhananjay Shinde and Manoj Gajkosh whom Palande had kept in the flat after making Anuj sign a two-year lease and license agreement with a German woman. Both Dhananjay and Manoj are the co-accused in the Tikku murder case. On the fateful day, while Palande took Anuj to Goa in his Mercedes Benz, Manoj and Dhananjay brutally murdered Tikku. Palande, during interrogation in the Tikku murder case, confessed that he killed Kakkad and dumped his body on Mumbai's outskirts. Police later recovered the decomposed body parts of Kakkad from forests of Kumbharli Ghat at Chiplun in Ratnagiri district. Money and some personal reasons led Palande to kill Kakkad, police said.