42-year-old Goraksh Bapu Patil, who had fled the city after the riots in 1992-93, was arrested from his residence in Kolhapur district
Twenty years after he had evaded the cops, Goraksh Bapu Patil, an accused in the deadly riots that engulfed the city in 1992-93 found himself in the police net. Patil had been booked under sections 141 (unlawful assembly), 302 (murder) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) after his involvement in the riots that saw almost 900 deaths. He had been subsequently released on bail and had escaped the city since then.
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The accused used to work in a mill on N M Joshi Marg and was a resident of Wani Chawl in the same area. The sessions court had declared him absconding in the year 2008, but the N M Joshi Marg police had been unable to locate him. They had been taken to task several times by DCP (Zone III) Vinayak Deshmukh due to this.
“We had got a tip-off that Patil had settled in Kolhapur district, which is his native town. But every time we went there, we could not succeed in getting him, as he came to know of our visits somehow,” said Kishore Shinde, police inspector of N M Joshi Marg police station.
The police approached this in a different fashion. They sent the accused a money order, which Patil had already been expecting from the government. “We put Rs 50 in the money order and when Patil received the money, we got confirmation that he was present in the city. The postman too confirmed it to us. We then stayed outside his residence for two days and trapped him,” added Shinde.
The police said Patil was a farmer in his village, Shahuwadi, as his mill had shut down. As the place was far, the N M Joshi police couldn’t visit every time. When they were completely assured that the man was there, they lay in waiting and arrested him when the opportunity came. “We have handed Patil to the sessions court that has send him to Arthur Road jail and his case will be soon heard,” Shinde told this correspondent.
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