Saturday, 16 December 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) has arrested an absconding accused, who had allegedly killed a man when he protested against the molestation of his sister by the accused and his two accomplices five years ago. He used to change his appearance and worked in different dhabas to earn a living, said the senior superintendent of police of STF Ayush Agrawal. He said that three men were allegedly molesting a woman in Haridwar’s Ranipur area on August 10, 2018 and when her brother named Hemant opposed it, they beat him to death and escaped. Out of the three accused identified as Veer Singh, Balbir and Virendra, the latter was arrested soon but the other two remained absconding since then. The deputy inspector general of police of Garhwal zone had also announced a bounty of Rs 50,000 each on both the accused. The SSP said, “The case was later shifted to STF from Haridwar police after which STF started looking for both the absconding accused in all possible places. Our teams searched for them for several months as a result of which, we were able to finally nab Veer Singh from Bijnor on November 31 this year. The team received important information about the other accused after Singh’s arrest. After a long planning and manual policing, the team finally arrested Balbir on Thursday from a dhaba in Haridwar where he had recently started working.” Aggarwal said that both the absconding accused were living in disguise in many states like Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for the last five years. Balbir also worked at various dhabas to earn a livelihood. Both the accused were not using mobile phones and had no permanent address which made it difficult for the authorities to catch them sooner. The STF was able to arrest them entirely via manual policing, he added.
