BHOPAL: Coming back to his home city Indore reportedly to fill up his Special Intensive Revision (SIR) voter enumeration form recently, a hardened inter-state criminal landed in the Madhya Pradesh police’s net.
Identified as Abdul Rashid, alias Talwar Singh (54), the criminal is accused in around 100 cases, including robbery, theft and murder in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states. He had recently returned to Indore after many years just to fill up the SIR enumeration form.
On December 3, he broke into a closed flat in Indore’s Geeta Nagar locality and decamped with gold and silver jewellery valued in lakhs of rupees.
Multiple teams were formed by the Indore Palasia police to crack the burglary-theft case, which led to the arrest of Abdul Rashid a few days later in Indore, following a specific tip-off.
“His questioning revealed that he had come down to his home city Indore after many years for filling up his SIR enumeration form. After filling the form, he committed the crime at the closed flat in Geeta Nagar, but acting on specific intelligence, the police arrested him a few days later,” Indore police spokesperson and additional DCP of the city crime branch Rajesh Dandotiya told TNIE on Saturday.
Subsequent investigations, based on Rashid’s sustained grilling, revealed that he was accused in around 100 cases of theft, robbery, burglary, murder and attempted murder in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states.
“Had he not come to Indore for filling up the SIR form and then not committed the burglary-theft, maybe we wouldn’t have been able to nab him,” a senior Indore police officer said.
Stolen properties, including cash, jewellery and a two-wheeler, all valued at over Rs 7.5 lakh, were recovered from Rashid’s possession.
He was originally a native of Indore’s North Toda locality and started committing thefts and burglaries from the age of 19. However, he later shifted to Akola in Maharashtra after the Indore police began searching for him. He married a woman in Akola and started living there.
He earned the infamous sobriquet ‘Talwar Singh’ a few years back, after he beheaded a man with a sword and then surrendered at the local police station with the severed head in Maharashtra’s Wardha.