Of a murder, an ad and cricket

He is dead.

But every time there is a commercial break in an India-Pakistan game, he will appear on television in an advertisement promoting peace.

Mohammad Ali Sheikh appears as the man carrying a goat in the Samsung advertisement Jeet Lo Dil Ko, which currently appears during the telecast of India-Pakistan matches.

Sheikh, 26, was shot by Amit Patel on March 14 when he allegedly tried to molest the latter's wife at the Bandra promenade in northwest Mumbai.

He was a resident of Mahim, a couple of miles away from where he was shot in his stomach.

Says his sister Raheem Bano, "He looked so handsome (in the television commercial). It was shot close to our house. He also did small roles in several films."

Sheikh, who owned a flower shop near the Mahim mosque, lived with his father, sisters and brother-in-law in a one-room tenement.

Patel has said he went to the Bandra promenade -- where many of the city's residents gather on weekends and in the evenings to get away from Mumbai's hustle and bustle -- with his wife, a friend's wife and three children. Sheikh and three others allegedly teased Patel's wife and later tried to molest her, Patel alleged.

When he tried to remonstrate with them, Patel has said, one of the men asked another to remove a gun. Hearing this, Patel, who owns a food store in north central Mumbai, shot Sheikh with his pistol.

The police claim Sheikh was a small-time ruffian against whom some cases had been lodged earlier.

Sheikh's family was reticent about the incident.

"We don't know anything," Raheem Bano, one of his sisters, said. "The police did not tell us anything. We got to know all about it from the newspapers. We didn't even get the post-mortem report. We were just given the body."

The family is also entangled in a dispute over property, which includes the one-room tenement and the flower shop which they value at Rs 40 lakhs (Rs 4 million).

That dispute has led to the allegation that some family members were somehow involved in Sheikh's death. "When he (Sheikh) was dying, he told me his friends murdered him," claims another sister Shaheen, who is estranged from the family and lives on a pavement close to her former home.

The police detained three of Sheikh's friends -- who were with him when the incident occurred -- for three days. They were released on Wednesday evening.

Patel was also detained for three days and released on Wednesday morning.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Bipin Kumar Singh told rediff.com: "We have not arrested anybody because there was no need for it. Everything has been done within the law."

Interestingly, the police registered a case against the dead Sheikh for criminal intimidation and molestation. No case has been registered against Patel. Sheikh's family too have not registered a case against the businessman.

Ashok P Shahani, a lawyer and one of Patel's friends, says Patel killed the 'eve-teaser' under the 'right to private defence.' According to the 'right to private defence,' if someone attacks you, you too can attack him. Ultimately, of course, it is the courts that decide if the conditions were grave enough to kill someone.