Run Rana Run

Two dacoity cases are still pending trial against him in Roorkee. 8216;8216;He looted Rs 15 lakh with the aim to collect money for the assassination of Phoolan Devi,8217;8217; says sub-inspector R B Chamola of Uttaranchal Police who has seen Rana from his early crime days. After Rana8217;s escape from Tihar, Delhi Police made a special request to the Uttaranchal Police asking for Chamola8217;s assistance in tracking Rana.

A Perfect Murder

RANA knew that murdering Phoolan Devi, then a Samajwadi Party MP, would mean a 8216;8216;guaranteed death sentence8217;8217;. So he ensured an alibi. He sent one of his servants Shravan Kumar to Roorkee Jail in an Excise Act case on his own name. He then lodged a report with the Roorkee police station over the theft of his car.

So, when he arrived at Phoolan Devi8217;s 44 Ashoka Road official residence on July 25, 2001, in the same car, as per official records he was in Roorkee jail and his car was stolen.

Delhi Crime Branch officials, however, caught up with him two days later on July 27. Rana8217;s confession: 8216;8216;I killed Phoolan Devi to avenge the Behmai massacre where she killed Rajputs.8217;8217;

Rana was sent to Tihar Jail but that8217;s another story.

The Great Escape

FROM July 2001 till February 2004, Rana had just one thing on his mind: how to escape from Tihar. For months Rana studied the jail system carefully and observed that jail officials didn8217;t conduct any checks when policemen came to take prisoners out for court hearings. So, Rana got his brother to send Sandeep Thakur, an unemployed Roorkee resident with no criminal background, to Tihar, impersonating as his lawyer. Thakur met Rana several times and finalised the plan.

At 7 am on February 17, 2004, Thakur came to Jail No. 1. This time he came not as a lawyer but as a DAP personnel. Claiming to be Constable Arvind Kumar of the 3rd Battalion, DAP, he even carried handcuffs to look the part. Producing a fake warrant, he told the guard he8217;d come to 8216;8216;take away8217;8217; Rana to Haridwar for the hearing of another case registered against him. Interestingly, Rana was wanted in a Haridwar case and a little while later the actual DAP team arrived to take him. But they8217;d missed him.

Long Road to Ghazni

THEN began the long chase in which Rana was always a step ahead of the police8212;a chase that went on for two years, two months and seven days. His first stop was Moradabad where he got Rs 1 lakh from his family and then on to Ranchi where he stayed for two months. There he got a fake passport in the name of one Sanjay Gupta8212;the photograph on it was his though. He got a visa to Bangladesh. An Interpol alert was raised on him a month later on July 11, 2005.

After visiting his friend Subhash Thakur in Varanasi prison, Rana crossed the border by road from Benapul into Bangladesh, making his base in a town named Khulna.

Here, he executed his 8216;8216;life8217;s biggest wish8217;8217;8212;getting what he believed were Prithviraj Chauhan8217;s ashes from his grave in Afghanistan which he said lay at one end of that of Muhammad Ghauri8217;s. He took a flight to Kabul via Dubai in January 2005. 8216;8216;In a war-torn Afghanistan, Rana spent close to two action-filled months. We must say he did a remarkable job, all single-handedly,8217;8217; says a top Delhi Police special cell official.

Rana says he first went from Kabul to Kandahar and then to Herat on the Afganistan-Iran border but could not locate the grave. He8217;s told the police that while surfing on the internet he chanced upon VHP leader Acharya Giriraj Kishore8217;s statement that Chauhan8217;s grave was in Ghazni. Rana found the grave in a village named Devak in Ghazni district. 8216;8216;He posed as a rich Pakistani who wanted to repair the graves. But the villagers were split in two camps8212;in favour and against the idea. The opposing group even kept him hostage for four days suspecting he was a foreign spy,8217;8217; say special cell officers.

But Rana managed to pull it off after five failed attempts, say the police. According to them Rana dug nearly 12 ft deep into the grave and got the 8216;ashes8217;. 8216;8216;Rana slipped out of the village and took the next flight out of Kabul,8217;8217; say special cell officials. Paul says that after landing in Dhaka, Rana immediately sent the 8216;ashes8217; by courier to his contact in UP. 8216;8216;We believe a samadhi has been made with the ashes in Etawah,8217;8217; police officials say.

Last stop, Kolkata

BACK in Dhaka, Rana started a coal business and shuttled between Kolkata, Dhanbad, Gaya, Devgarh and Varanasi. A 15-member police team of Delhi police, including SI Chamola, were on his chase. The first clue came late last year when Rana called his home in Roorkee on his father8217;s death. The police tracked the call to Germany but found that Rana had been using conferencing where his calls first went to a foreign country to be re-routed. Police established Rana made that call from a PCO in Kolkata.

On April 24 they learnt he was staying in Blue Moon Hotel in the city on a fake identity of Delhi ACP Joy Tirkey! The police raided the hotel but Rana had left. 8216;8216;At 7.15 pm, Rana made the mistake of staying in a PCO booth for some more minutes as it was raining heavily. Delhi Police8217;s longest chase for a criminal ended there,8217;8217; police commissioner K K Paul says.

Now in police custody, Rana will go back to Tihar. The jail authorities are sure to remember him8212;four senior officials were suspended and as many as 79 wardens transferred following his escape. 8216;8216;No jail can hold me in. I know four escape routes from Tihar. I still have to show the three others8230;I will escape again,8217;8217; Rana says.

So, is this the end?