As a fugitive from law, ‘Aadu’ Antony had partnered with several women who unwittingly helped him maintain a façade of ordinary domesticity to the outside world.
Police investigators say the ruse helped the 53-year-old ‘computer thief’ evade the law ever since he was declared wanted in the murder of a policeman on night patrol in Kollam on June 26, 2012.
Met through newspaper ads
Antony had met his women through matrimonial advertisements in newspapers. He only chose women with scarce familial support and little income.
Antony used them to hire houses, take mobile phone connections, gain residential certificates, get ration cards, and initiate bank accounts while on the run from the police. They also unsuspectingly helped him sell computer parts he often stole for a living.
None of them knew his real identity. The woman with whom he was living in Erode in Tamil Nadu before his chance arrest in Palakkad on Monday thought Antony to be a Tirupur-based cloth trader.
No relationship lasted more than a few months. He dumped the woman who helped him flee Kerala in 2012. She was arrested and remanded for harbouring a wanted man and now lives in a State-run destitute home.
He ‘married’ again in Shirdi in Maharashtra and used the woman to place advertisements promising cheap board and talismans delivered by mail for pilgrims.
Antony, a resident of Kundara, earned his nickname after he was arrested for livestock theft as a minor. His mother, a fisherwoman, used her meagre savings to send him to Gulf. However, Antony returned and was subsequently jailed for burglary for four years till 2008.
Following his release in 2008, investigators said Antony had married at least 14 times, leaving behind a trail of broken families.
Antony’s arrest has signalled the end of a manhunt that invariably led to a dead end. The search had involved FB campaigns and crowd sourcing techniques.