BENGALURU: In an interesting turn of events, a 52-year-old police constable was arrested in Karnataka for allegedly stealing a service revolver of his colleague more than a decade ago.
The incident came to light when police were investigating an assault complaint filed by the same constable, Purushotham, who was posted as gunman for MLC and film producer C R Manohar. Purushotham alleged that on February 17 this year he was assaulted by some youths after he objected to them urinating near a theatre.
After the assault, he was admitted to a hospital and a complaint was filed. During the incident, Purushotham was carrying a gun and Annamalai, who had assaulted him, had snatched it away.
However, Purushotham did not mention this in the complaint, as it is prohibited to carry a gun during non-duty hours. After filing the complaint, Purushotham also produced a gun before the police claiming that it was his. Initially police did not doubt him. But after arresting Annamalai, police recovered a gun from him.
Suspecting something amiss, police checked the butt number of the gun produced by Purushotham. To their surprise, they realised that the number was of a gun stolen from a constable 11 years ago.
Thus police learnt that Purushotham had stolen the gun from his colleague Dasharath in 2006 while working at Raj Bhavan. The gun found with Annamalai was the service gun of Purushotham.