PATNA: A thief in Bihar’s Buxar district kept police on tenterhook for nearly 33 years. Jhanjhatua, (55) a resident of Udiyanganj in the Buxar district, had been involved in a series of theft and robberies in houses and other business establishments in the early 1990s.
About a dozen FIRs were registered against Jhanjhatua in different police stations, including Krishna Braha police station, in Buxar district and a hunt was launched to arrest him. Warrants of arrest were issued by the district court against the thief, who had robbed the sleep of not only the local residents but also the police.
Station house officer (SHO) of Krishna Brahma police station Santosh Kumar said that Jhanjhatua, a notorious thief of the region, managed to dodge police every time when the police raided his house and his other locations to arrest him.
On Sunday night, luck didn’t favour Jhanjhatua and he was caught while sleeping in his house at his native village. “We had definite information about his location this time and luck favoured us,” the SHO said. Acting on a tip-off, a police team attached to Krishna Brahma police station conducted a raid at the thief’s house.
He was absconding for the past 33 years, said Buxar superintendent of police Manish Kumar. He said that it was detected during a review of the pending cases that an accused in a series of theft cases was evading arrest for over three decades. “I immediately asked the SHO concerned to ensure the arrest of the accused,” the SP added.
Initially, Jhanjhatua left his home and shifted to other cities outside Bihar to evade his arrest. When the police believed that he would not return to his home, he secretly started residing there. During interrogation, Jhanjhatua said that he remained out of the family’s touch for about a decade so that nobody could get information about his exact location.
Later he started visiting his home off and on. Co-residents believed that cases have been disposed of and Jhanjhatua was living a normal life. But that was not true. “We were taken aback when police arrested him,” said his neighbour Ratan Lal. SP Manish said that during the course of police action against absconders, another accused identified as Jitendra Ram was arrested. Ram was also absconding for the past one decade.