DNA Links Gujarat Brothers to 34-Year-Old Ahmedabad Murder Case

A 34-year-old murder case finally cracked open when Gujarat police dug up skeletal remains from a Vatva property, matched the DNA to Farzana Doshu Radhanpuri’s siblings, and arrested two brothers in connection with the killing. The cold-case turn was stark: a woman long listed as missing, a buried body hidden for decades, and forensic evidence strong enough to move investigators from rumor to formal charges.

Ahmedabad Crime Branch officers said the arrested men were Shamshuddin Khedawala, 61, and his brother Iqbal Khedawala, 63. Police said Farzana, also known as Shabnam, was allegedly killed in 1992 and buried in a pit in the veranda of a house in Qutub Nagar, Vatva. The remains were traced after a tip led investigators back to the property, where FSL and Crime Branch personnel recovered fragments of bone, teeth and hair from a deep drainage catchpit under the house.

The body was found on April 29, 2026, under house number 10 in Lane 3 of Qutubnagar, in a pit described as about 14 feet deep. Investigators later said the jawbone and teeth were used for DNA comparison, and the match came back against blood samples taken from Farzana’s siblings. That link gave police the scientific confirmation they had been missing for years and turned a disappearance case into a murder investigation with a body.

Police booked four people in all, including two living suspects and two who had died, and said Farzana’s husband and associates were tied to the alleged cover-up. One account said police believed Shamshuddin killed her with help from his brother and two others before the body was concealed. Another report said investigators followed unusual neighborhood leads, including claims about occult or spirit activity near the house, before returning to the abandoned property and digging. The case now stands as a rare cold-case breakthrough, but the core questions remain the same ones that haunted the family for decades: why Farzana was killed, and how the truth stayed buried for so long.