India News | 17 Years After Jumping Bail in UP, Murder Convict Arrested in Jharkhand

Hazaribag (Jharkhand), Jul 17 (PTI) Nearly 17 years after a murder case convict jumped bail in Uttar Pradesh and went missing, a Special Task Force (STF) has arrested him in Jharkhand's Hazaribagh, an official said on Monday.

Following a tip-off, an STF team from Lucknow, with the help of the local police, raided a hotel in Hazaribagh town and arrested 50-year-old Ved Prakash Pandey, who was carrying a bounty of Rs 50,000 on his head, on Sunday.

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Pandey, a resident of Mau in Uttar Pradesh, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court for murdering a man in 2001 following a dispute. He was granted bail by the high court and was released from jail.

After the Supreme Court rejected the bail order in 2006, he was not found.

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Pandey confessed during interrogation that he had stayed in Goa, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune and Dhanbad using different identities in all these years, an STF official said.

A mobile phone mechanic, the man came to Hazaribag around a year ago and stayed in various hotels.

The police seized one mobile phone, two identity cards and Rs 2,200 in cash from his possession, the official said.

The STF is taking Pandey to Lucknow on transit remand.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)