Firozabad: For 42 years, he evaded the police. No photographs, no identification record, no fingerprints. He assumed a pseudo identity and led a normal life. But he could not abandon his love for his signature moustache, and that, in the end, proved his undoing.
Firozabad police Wednesday arrested Ratan, who had been absconding since he was released on bail in 1984 by the Allahabad High Court in a culpable homicide case.
The arrest came days after the high court asked police to produce him “dead or alive” after the victim’s family approached the court. With no photograph and other identification records available with police, tracking him down was not going to be easy.
Circle Officer (City) Praveen Tiwari said Ratan and his accomplice Maniraj alias Maniya had been sentenced to six years in prison by the Firozabad District Court in the case of culpable homicide.
In 1984, Ratan came out on bail and never returned. He abandoned his home in Bhim Nagar. Maniya died in 2002, and Ratan remained absconding.
Firozabad Senior Superintendent of Police Aditya Langhe said that following the HC’s direction to produce Ratan, a team led by Dakshin police station inspector Yogesh Pal Singh and sub-inspector Singhraj Singh resorted to old-fashioned investigative methods, going door-to-door to find anyone who might have seen or heard of him.
A majority of the residents of Bhim Nagar had no recollection of the man. But some old-timers who had lived in the locality about 50 years back had some memories that they shared with police. And the web of deception woven by Ratan began to unravel.
Police learnt he may be living anonymously in a house in the Narayan Nagar area of Ramgarh police station in Firozabad, barely a few kilometers from the Bhim Nagar locality in Dakshin Firozabad police station area, where he lived before being convicted by the trial court and jailed.
Ratan changed his name to ‘Ratna’, assumed the identity of a factory labourer for the past four decades. He would change his house frequently to evade the police.
One of the men the police contacted told them that Ratan was notorious in the area at that time as Ratan Lal Ghodi Wala, as he used to ride a horse, and had a thick, rather uniquely shaped moustache. When Ratan had killed his victim back in the day, he had done so with a hockey stick while riding his horse.
Inspector Yogesh Pal Singh told The Print that when police finally reached that house Wednesday, they found a stunned man. It appeared he never imagined, even in his wildest dreams, that police would come knocking on his door.
Police did not have the proof to say it was Ratan, but the man’s propensity to keep a thick and uniquely shaped moustache indicated that he was the man they were after.
Ratan’s 42-year evasion had ended.
He told police he had started believing the case against him had fallen through the cracks and he would live and die a free man. He said initially he’d lived in constant fear that the family he started after jumping bail would learn about his criminal past.
He got married after coming out on bail. With each passing year, he became confident that his past was behind him. Even his wife and children were unaware that, in the eyes of the law, he was a criminal.
But his moustache ended his stolen freedom. When he was arrested, his moustache hadn’t changed.
The inspector said that following his arrest, Ratan was presented before the magistrate and sent to jail Friday. The High Court has also been informed of the development, and the case against him will resume soon.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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