Ganesh Devidas Shinde, alias Ganya, a Mumbai-based criminal with seven registered cases against his name, escaped from Navi Mumbai Municipal Hospital (NMMH) on Saturday. He was taken there for a medical check-up from Taloja jail, where he has been housed since September 2011.

According to the police, he left the room on the pretext of using the toilet and escaped by damaging the grills on the window. Forty year-old old Shinde spent four months in Arthur Road jail in 2011 in connection with a number of cases of kidnapping and extortion. The Mumbai crime branch had also arrested three of Ganya’s associates.