Mumbai: A history-sheeter, who had been absconding for 23 years after jumping bail in 1995, was arrested on Friday.
According to Crime Branch officers, the accused has been identified as Suresh Upadhyay (46), a resident of Kanjurmarg, who used to be a member of the Arun Gawli gang in the 1990s. Mr. Gawli, who later turned to politics, is lodged in the Nagpur central jail after being convicted for the 2007 murder of Shiv Sena corporator Kamalakar Jamsandekar.
Sources said Mr. Upadhyay was arrested by the Unit VII of the Crime Branch following one month of effort. He was arrested in 1995 in an attempt to murder case registered against him two years earlier, and secured bail the same year, after which he never appeared for a single court hearing. The Sessions Court subsequently issued a standing non-bailable warrant against him.
“Mr. Upadhyay, after jumping bail, never once went to his Kanjurmarg residence, where his brothers live. Instead, he spent some time in his native Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, after which he came back to Maharashta a few years later. He started working at a flour mill in Kalyan and later shifted to Badlapur,” a Crime Branch officer said.
Around a month ago, the Crime Branch received a tip-off about his return to the State. The police kept a watch on Mr. Upadhyay’s Kanjurmarg residence for over two weeks, after which they learned about his location.
A police team picked him up at his Badlapur residence on Friday morning and arrested him.
“Mr. Upadhyay, over the past 23 years, managed to save money and start his own flour mill in Badlapur. He also got married during this time and has a son,” an officer said.
The first offence registered against him was in 1992, when he, along with three others, allegedly shot dead Sena member Maruti Haldankar in Bhandup. He was also accused of stabbing a businessman to death in Ulhasnagar in 1992, a firing in Bhandup in which one person was injured in 1993, and a murder in Bhandup in 1995.
