K. Purushotham Pandey, son of a retired IAS officer from Karnataka, was arrested by the city police on Wednesday on charge of cheating a resident of Palarivattom.
Pandey also has cases registered against him in Mangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad.
The city police began following Pandey’s trail after receiving a complaint in August 2012 that he had cheated a city resident.
Pandey, along with his wife and three children, had been renting the complainant’s sister’s house for a monthly rent of Rs.40,000.
The family did not raise any suspicions as they were well-behaved. Pandey had told the complainant that he had come to Kochi to set up a telecommunications company in Kerala. He took Rs.15 lakh from the complainant promising to give him shares from the company. Pandey and his family allegedly disappeared with the money the very next day. They also allegedly took away furniture, a television, refrigerator and other items from the house.
Following the complaint, the city police began tracking Pandey’s whereabouts.
By following the vehicle used to transport the furniture, they tracked him to Yelahanka in Karnataka and then Mumbai. A statement from the police said Pandey had been careful not to use his phone or original identity cards anywhere while he was on the run. He reportedly stayed at a top hotel in Mumbai saying he was a CBI officer just transferred from Kochi to Mumbai.
The police later tracked him to Hyderabad through his laptop. But Pandey eluded the police again. City Police Commissioner K.G. James drew attention to the case again while reviewing pending cases.
The police then picked up his trail in Chennai through his pet pug that he kept at pet shops wherever he was staying. A police team picked him up from a luxury flat in Chennai.
He has several cases pending against him in different States, including one for cheating a man of Rs.83 lakh in Hyderabad.
