A Vadodara man, who had escaped from the Gujarat police custody, was apprehended near the Assam-Mizoram border on Monday.
Identified as Viraj Patel, the accused was earlier arrested for posing as an official of the Gujarat chief minister’s office and also raping a woman.
According to the police, Patel had managed to dodge a police official and escape from the premises of a court in Vadodara when he was being produced before a judge on November 10.
A police sub-inspector and a constable were suspended after Patel escaped custody, and the city crime branch had formed teams to apprehend him.
Patel was lodged at Vadodara central jail as an undertrial. He had also allegedly posed as president of the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City).
Police scanned around 500 CCTV footage, used technical surveillance and human intelligence and covered a distance of around 7,000 km to trace the accused to the northeastern states, from where he was trying to cross the international border.
After fleeing Gujarat, Patel ended up in Chhattisgarh, from where he travelled to Bihar, Assam, and Tripura and was found to be hiding somewhere in Assam and Mizoram.
“After locating the accused in Tripura, Assam and Mizoram, the crime branch formed teams to keep a watch as he constantly changed his hideout. The police managed to track him down somewhere along the Assam-Mizoram border, arrested and brought him back to Vadodara,” the police said.
The accused is a history-sheeter who has cases of theft and cheating to his name in police stations in Ahmedabad. He was arrested in Vadodara for raping and cheating a woman and using fake identity cards.
Also Read: Waterlogged Chennai Exposes Government’s Inefficiency: Edappadi K Palaniswami
