Wanted for gangraping teen, UP sub-inspector arrested after a 4-month-long manhunt

The fugitive officer had been carrying a reward of Rs 50,000 on his head. The police said they had also planned proceedings to attach his property as pressure mounted to bring him to justice.

Maurya was named, along with a YouTuber, in a case involving the alleged kidnapping and rape of a minor girl in January. While the police swiftly arrested the YouTuber, Shiv Baran, within days of the FIR being registered, Maurya managed to evade capture, slipping off the radar and remaining absconding for months before his eventual arrest.

“In the kidnapping and sexual assault case registered in January, the involvement of two persons came to light. One was arrested earlier, and the second accused, Amit Kumar Maurya, has now been taken into custody,” Sankalp Sharma, Additional Commissioner of Police, Kanpur, said on Friday.

The other accused, Shiv Baran, a self-styled YouTuber, remains in jail. The police have already filed a chargesheet against him.

According to the police, Maurya, a 2023-batch sub-inspector, disappeared shortly after Shiv Baran’s arrest. Tracing him proved challenging. Sources said police teams fanned out across at least five districts where his relatives lived, hoping to uncover clues about his whereabouts. The police also relied on old-fashioned legwork, manually mapping his network of contacts and identifying persons who may have been helping him while he was on the run.

As the search intensified, people believed to be close to Maurya were reportedly urged by the police to persuade him to surrender before a court. However, even as pressure mounted, he stayed out of sight. His bid for interim bail was eventually rejected, further narrowing his options before his arrest.

The case was lodged in January after a minor girl alleged that she had stepped out of her home when she was forcibly pulled into a black SUV. She claimed that two men were inside the vehicle, one of whom was wearing a police uniform and was driving.

Despite raising an alarm, she alleged that the SUV was taken to a deserted area near railway tracks, where the two men sexually assaulted her. She told the police that she was confined inside the vehicle for more than 30 minutes before being brought back to the place from where she had been abducted and left there.

The girl’s brother told the police that the family began searching for her when she did not return home by evening. She eventually reached home around midnight and narrated the incident to her family.