Patna
Police in Bihar have arrested a murderer who was acting as religious ascetic in the Hindu pilgrim town of Ayodhya for the past 37 years after being handed down life imprisonment in a murder case. The arrested murderer was accused of killing a co-villager with an axe and chopping up his body over a petty land dispute.
Police said the murderer, identified as Suresh Singh, had killed co-villager Sugan Singh, a resident of Neuri village under Bihta block in Patna district, over a trivial land issue and had chopped up the victim’s body into pieces in a horrible incident in 1981.
Subsequently, the Patna High Court awarded him life imprisonment holding him guilty in the case, but he fled the scene and settled in Ayodhya, one of the holiest lands for Hindus in Uttar Pradesh. He also ended all contacts with his family in Patna to ensure he remained out of reach of police.
The situation changed recently when the High Court pulled up the police administration for failing to arrest the murder convict who had been absconding for years.
Acting on a lead, a team of Patna police recently reached Ayodhya and went on a secret mission to gather information about him. It was during this time that the police came to know that the fugitive murderer has been acting as the head priest of a Hindu mutt (religious establishment) after getting rid of its chief with the help of his gang. The police promptly arrested the absconding criminal.
Reports said even the police were taken aback by the appearance of the criminal who, like a typical ascetic, had grown his hair and was sporting a beard and vermilion marks on his face to conceal his identity.
“We faced a lot of trouble in arresting the criminal who had changed his appearance like a typical priest and was also behaving like that,” said a police official Ranjeet Singh who was part of the team which arrested the criminal.
