A suspected drug peddler, who hacked to death an Ahmedabad police constable this week, was picked up in central Gujarat following a massive manhunt involving 250 personnel.
Drug peddler Manish Shrawan Kumar was arrested on Thursday evening from a Bandra-Jaipur train near Karjan in Vadodara district, Joint Commissioner of Police J.K. Bhatt said.
The Ahmedabad Crime Branch had a tip-off that after killing constable Chandrakant Makwana, Manish fled to Mumbai and from there he boarded a train bound for Kota in his home state Rajasthan, Bhatt said.
The police immediately swung into action and as many as 50 railway policemen boarded the train at Surat. Bhatt said the police in coordination with the railway authorities managed to halt the train at Karjan station, though it is not an official halt.
About 250 cops began looking for Manish in the train after ensuring that no door of any coach remained unattended.
The police found Manish in the last coach of the train.
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Manish sat with his face hidden throughout the journey but was identified by the police, Bhatt said.
Just after midnight, Manish was brought to the Crime Branch office in Ahmedabad from where he had escaped less than 24 hours ago.
Manish had repeatedly hit constable Makwana, 40, on his head with an iron rod to kill him in the Crime Branch office well past Wednesday midnight.
Makwana's body was found lying in a pool of blood in a room on the ground floor of the Anti-Organized Crime Cell Thursday morning.
The constable had brought the drug peddler to the office for questioning after midnight.
"At 7 a.m. today, when the officer on duty came in, he saw Chandrakant (Makwana) lying in a pool of blood. An iron rod was also lying there. The suspect had fled," said Crime Branch officer C.N. Rajput.
He escaped from the back door.
The Crime Branch headquarters has a three-tier security comprising state reserve police, the local police and Crime Branch staff.
Several staff members, too, were present in that particular building at the time but no one heard any commotion, the police said.
Nothing was recorded in the CCTV cameras in the building either, since most of them were not working.
"Only one camera, located outside the building was functional. The footage from it is being examined," said the police officer.
--IANS
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