Bhubaneswar: A man from Odisha’s Ganjam district, who had been absconding for last 28 years after being booked for a murder in Gujarat, has finally been arrested by Surat crime branch from Kerala.
He has been identified as Raghunath Pradhan (52).
A 23-year-old then, Pradhan and his friend Bina Shetty had allegdely stabbed Shivram Nayak (22) to death following a quarrel on March 4, 1995. They then disposed of his body in a water canal at Gautamnagar in Pandesara area.
The trio hailed from Ganjam and were staying in Siddharthnagar in Pandesara and working in textile factories.
Pandesara police later recovered the body and registered a case against the duo under Sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), and 114 of the IPC. Both Shetty and Pradhan had been on the run since then.
A squad led by Sub-Inspector P Y Chitte worked for over one-and-a-half year on the case and traced Pradhan to Kerala. He was nabbed from Adoor town in Pathanamthitta district on Thursday . “He has been staying in Kerala since 2007 and working as a carpenter. The accused is married and father of two children — a 20-year-old boy and 18-year-old girl. His family members do not know about his involvement in the murder,” Crime Branch Police Inspector L D Vagadia was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
The other accused in the murder case Bina Shetty is still on the run, he added.
Pradhan’s 21-year-old son, a college student in Odisha, told The Indian Express, “I was in college when I received a call from Surat police regarding his arrest. None of us knew about this murder. When I spoke to Papa, he told me to take care of my sister and mother.”
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