17 years after jumping bail in UP, murder convict arrested in Jharkhand

Hazaribag (Jharkhand), July 18

Nearly 17 years after a murder case convict jumped bail in Uttar Pradesh and went missing, a Special Task Force (STF) has arrested him in Jharkhand’s Hazaribag, an official said.

Following a tip-off, an STF team from Lucknow, with the help of the local police, raided a hotel in Hazaribag town and arrested 50-year-old Ved Prakash Pandey, who was carrying a bounty of Rs 50,000 on his head, on Sunday.

Pandey, a resident of Mau in Uttar Pradesh, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court for murdering a man in 2001 following a dispute. He was granted bail by the high court and was released from jail.

However, as the Supreme Court rejected the bail order in 2006, he absconded.

Pandey confessed during interrogation that he had stayed in Goa, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune and Dhanbad using different identities all these years, an STF official said.