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 s
taying 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.”