4 Arrested over 2023 Tokyo Murder Made to Look Like Suicide

Tokyo, Dec. 9 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo police have arrested four men on suspicion of ordering a male colleague to stand at a railroad crossing and making him fatally collide with a train in Tokyo in 2023.

The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Manabu Sasaki, 39, president of a building painter company, and employees Akihito Shimahata, 34, Shunta Nozaki, 39, and Atsuya Iwaide, 30.

The police initially viewed the incident as a possible suicide or accident, but they came to suspect the involvement of Sasaki and others as they investigated a suspicious vehicle that departed from near the railway crossing soon after the collision.

Investigators decided to pursue the case as a murder, thinking that the suspects made the 56-year-old victim, Osamu Takano, obey their orders through daily assaults, making him unable to reject their orders.

The police believe that the four men threatened Takano, a former employee of the company, through assaults and confined him in a vehicle between around 11:40 p.m. Dec. 2, 2023, and midnight. They also allegedly ordered him to stand in a railroad crossing between Shimo-akatsuka and Tobu-nerima stations on the Tobu Tojo Line and made him collide with a train, making it look like a suicide.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]