THANE, March 9 -- When 33-year-old Uber driver Nasir Salam Ahmed accepted a late-night ride on Thursday, he could not have known it would turn out to be his last. Ahmed, a resident of Airoli in Navi Mumbai and originally from Uttar Pradesh, went missing five days ago before his decomposed body was finally traced to the remote Ganeshkhind area of Malshej Ghat in Ahilyanagar (Ahmednagar) district on Saturday. The Thane Rural Crime Branch has arrested his last passenger, a 21-year-old engineering student, in connection with the case. The accused has been identified as Adarsh Chandrakant Bhelerao, 21, a second-year engineering student and resident of Titwala. The case first came to light early on Friday morning when local motorists spotted a Maruti Ertiga cab with blood stains inside and outside the vehicle abandoned in Goveli village along the Kalyan-Murbad highway in Titwala. Alarmed by the discovery, they alerted the police. Images and videos of the blood-stained vehicle soon began circulating widely on social media. Since the vehicle was found within the jurisdiction of the Titwala police, they initially began the investigation. However, at that stage the whereabouts of the driver remained unknown. A crucial breakthrough came when the Otur police in Ahilyanagar district recovered a body bearing multiple injury marks from the Ganeshkhind stretch of Malshej Ghat. The body was later suspected to be that of the missing driver, prompting the Thane Rural Crime Branch to intensify its probe. Investigators began piecing together the sequence of events using a combination of technical and field intelligence. Police analysed records from the cab-hailing application to identify the passenger who had booked the ride and examined CCTV footage from several locations along the Kalyan-Murbad route. Footage reportedly showed the suspect stopping at a petrol pump to refuel the vehicle after the alleged crime. Following the digital trail and mobile phone records, the police traced the suspect to his residence in Titwala, where he was arrested on Saturday. According to Bhausaheb Gaikwad of the Thane Rural Crime Branch, the accused confessed to the crime during interrogation. Bhelerao allegedly told investigators that he had booked the cab late on Thursday night to travel from Titwala to Junnar as he was heading to Pune to meet his girlfriend. "While they were passing through the Ganeshkhind area of Malshej Ghat, the driver allegedly attempted to rob him by threatening him with a knife. The accused claimed that he acted in self-defence, overpowered the driver and stabbed him with the same knife, resulting in his death," Gaikwad said. After the incident, Bhelerao allegedly dumped the body by the roadside in the ghat area before driving the vehicle back towards Titwala. He later abandoned the blood-stained car along the Kalyan-Murbad highway and returned to his residence. Authorities used cab booking records, the suspect's mobile phone data and CCTV footage from multiple points along the route to reconstruct the chain of events. Police are awaiting forensic and post-mortem reports....