Pune: Murder accused gives cops the slip, caught after 6 hrs

Labade, a resident of Ramoshi Aali in Hadapsar, is among the five accused in the murder of Sandip Balu Navaskar, 19, of Sinhagad Road who was killed in an attack with sharp weapons.

Others accused in the case — Santosh Gaikwad (25), Ajay Jadhav (30), Nitin Ranjhunjar (26) and Mahesh Kulkarni (22) — are currently behind bars ever since their arrest in the case in April 2015.

“Since the case is being heard in the court of Additional Sessions Judge N M Gimekar, all five accused were brought to the court from Yerwada Prison. As is required, the handcuffs of the accused were removed before they entered the court room. However, when the case hearing began, the judge checked the accused and demanded to know where was the fifth accused. It was then that the jail guards who had brought him for the hearing realised that Labade had disappeared,” said a policeman deployed at the court premise.

Soon afterwards, several teams were dispatched to look for him in the nearby areas and nakabandi (blockage of roads by the police) was also announced to intercept him while trying to flee.

Finally, he was nabbed by Sinhagad police from Wagholi at about 8.30 pm. Police said he was planning to leave the city.

“He had escaped from court premise at about 3 pm. He used three-four autorickshaws to travel and had reached Wagholi from where he was planning to leave the city. We managed to nab him from Wagholi before he could make the move,” said Vishnu Jagtap, Senior Police Inspector, Sinhagad Police

In the light of this incident, the Pune Bar Association has demanded that the security at the Shivajinagar Court Complex be strengthened as there has been several incidences of accused fleeing, attacks against layers and even judges as well as people sneaking inside the court premises with weapons.

“Everyday about 200 accused are brought to the court to attend the hearings in their cases. There are only 55 to 60 cops at station at the premise when there’s a sanctioned strength of 126 cops including police Inspector, Sub-Inspectors and Constables. Till the time the strength is increased, they should use video conferencing instead of bringing the accused physically. The PBA has demanded it several times but police is yet to step up the security at the sensitive premise,” said Advocate Milind Pawar, former President of PBA.