The Mumbai Police Crime Branch has arrested a murder convict who was on the run for 12 years after jumping furlough in 2008.
On March 17, 2003, a woman who lived by herself in her Bhulabhai Desai Road residence was found with her throat slit. Valuables worth over ₹2 lakh were missing from her house. The Gamdevi police had arrested Rajeshkumar Dwivedi (22), a security guard at the building, and had charged him with murder and robbery.
Dwivedi was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment, after which he was lodged in Nashik Central Jail.
In 2008, he appealed his conviction in the Bombay High Court and the same year, obtained furlough for a month citing his wife’s illness. However, he never returned to prison and had been missing since then.
In 2017, the Crime Branch was instructed to trace him without delay, and had been investigating since.
“We first visited his hometown in Uttar Pradesh, as well as his wife’s native place in Madhya Pradesh, which were on top of our list of probable locations where he might be hiding. For several months, we scoured the area, cultivating local informants,” an officer with Crime Branch Unit II said.
After inquiries in both States, the investigating team learned that Dwivedi’s wife was constantly shuttling between U.P. and M.P. However, in M.P., she was not staying at her parents’ house, but at a different place. The police kept a watch and found that she was staying with a man who worked as a driver.
“We watched the man for several days, before confirming he was the same person we were looking for, and picked him up for inquiries on January 12. After preliminary inquiries confirmed that he was indeed Dwivedi, we produced him in a local court and obtained transit remand till Thursday. We brought him to Mumbai and produced him in the sessions court,” the officer said.
The court sent him to Nashik Central Jail, the police said.
