Presumed dead, burglary accused held after 24 yrs
NEW DELHI: A 62-year-old man, who was evading court trials in a 31-year-old burglary case and had been declared dead in court records, has been arrested along with his co-accused by Delhi Police in Faridabad, officers aware of the matter said on Friday.
Arjun Singh was 31 when he and his partner Charan Singh, who was 20 years old at the time, committed a burglary in Delhi’s Alipur in 1991. “Arjun and Charan were arrested in that case but they jumped bail and stopped attending the court proceedings. In 1998, the court declared them proclaimed offenders,” said deputy commissioner of police (outer-north)
Devesh Kumar Mahla.
“Arjun was declared dead in the court records but the (abated) charge sheet filed against him was still pending and the case proceedings were still on, even 31 years after it was registered at the Alipur police station… We will have to obtain the court records to ascertain when exactly and on whose information Arjun was declared dead in the records,” the DCP said.
Police came to know that Arjun was still alive after they arrested Charan on Thursday.
According to Mahla, during the scrutiny of the original case file of the burglary, police learnt that both accused and their sureties for bail were Rai Sikhs from Jhangola village near Delhi’s Narela. “It was also learnt that some Rai Sikh families had shifted to Sherpur village in Faridabad. Our team members visited Sherpur village and after lots of effort traced Charan,” the DCP said.
The DCP said Charan had been posing as a spiritual guru at an ashram near Sherpur village and had more than 500 followers. Subsequently, police personnel from the raiding team arrested him on Thursday.
“Initially, he tried to outsmart us by claiming that he did not remember the burglary case. But when we confronted him with some details and documents, he confirmed that he was arrested in the case but spilled the beans on his co-accused Arjun,” an officer, who was part of the raiding team, said on condition of anonymity.
The police team was taken aback when told that Arjun was still alive. He was caught later on Thursday from a forested area near Faridabad’s Dadasiya village, where he lived in a shanty and earned his livelihood by selling stolen wood, police said.
“We searched the forest for nearly four hours before we spotted and caught Arjun,” the officer said.
DCP Mahla added that Arjun and Charan will be produced before the concerned court for further legal proceedings.