Rana, who carried a reward of Rs50,000 on his head, has been brought to Delhi and remanded to police custody for eight days.
NEW DELHI: After a two-year manhunt, the Delhi police arrested Sher Singh Rana, prime accused in the killing of bandit-queen-turned-MP Phoolan Devi, at a PCO in Kolkata on Monday evening.
Rana, who carried a reward of Rs50,000 on his head, has been brought to Delhi and remanded to police custody for eight days.
The arrest was made two years, two months and seven days after Rana made a dramatic escape from the high security Tihar Jail in Delhi. Police Commissioner K K Paul said Rana first fled to Moradabad in UP and then was constantly on the move.
From Moradabad, Rana went to Ranchi where he made a passport in the name of Sanjay Gupta. Then he moved to Kolkata and from there to Khulna in Bangladesh. He stayed in Bangladesh for some time before flying to Dubai and then to Kandahar, Herat and finally Ghazni.
According to the commissioner, Rana wanted to get the relics of Rajput King Prithvi Raj Chauhan. Rana came back to Bangladesh in December 2004 and returned to Ranchi in 2005.
From Ranchi he travelled across Jharkhand before going back to Kolkata on April 20 this year. About the financial aid that he received, the commissioner said one Subhash Thakur, one of the accused in the Mumbai bomb blast had helped him. “He sent him Rs 15000 per month through hawala,” said the Commissioner.
“We had definite information about his movements. This month we received information that he would be in Kokata in a certain hotel.
A 15 member team of Special Cell of Delhi police was dispatched and after keeping a close watch on him, he was held from a PCO in the Dharamtalla area of the city,” said the Commissioner.
A satellite phone and a passport, bearing his photograph but in the name of Sanjay Gupta, were recovered from his possession. He will be taken to various places to get leads on his other associates who aided his escape and his movements for two years said the Commissioner.
Rana was staying in the hotel under the name of Delhi ACP Joy Tirkey of the Crime Branch, to whom he was handed over after his arrest on July 27, 2001 — two days after he allegedly killed Phoolan Devi at her Ashoka Road official residence (on July 25), the Commissioner informed.
Rana escaped from Tihar Jail when his aide dressed as a constable fooled the jail authorities into believing that he had come to take Rana to a court in Haridwar town for a trial.
Agencies add from Kolkata: Hours after a Delhi police team arrested Sher Singh Rana, the key accused in the Phoolan Devi murder case from Kolkata, the city police on Tuesday pleaded ignorance about his arrest. “We have no such knowledge,” Kolkata Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee said.
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