Satyendra Dubey

Patna, June 23: Udai Kumar Choudhary, the main accused in the murder of the National Highway Authority of India’s engineer and IIT passout Satyendra Dubey escaped from the judicial custody for the second time today.

Guards brought Choudhary with co-accused Mantu Kumar and Pinku Ravidas from Beur central to Patna civil court for their production before the CBI special court around 1pm.

Though it is not clear how, but Choudhary managed to free himself off his handcuffs and ropes with which two unarmed prison guards were holding him and ran towards the Ganga banks, metres behind the civil court premises.

Though policemen patrolling the court chased him, Choudhary “disappeared”.

“The prisoner either jumped into the river and swam towards the banana plantation across the river or hid in the ghat among the devotees,” an officer said.

Patna police have sealed the Ganga banks from Patna to Danapur and is conducting a “massive search”, said city superintendent of police Anwar Hussein. This is the second time that Choudhary managed to make a fool of the force and escape from custody. He pulled off a similar act on December 15, 2006, but was arrested one-and-a-half months later from Gaya.

Anwar Hussein admitted: “Yes, it is our lapse. But, law does not allow prison guards to keep arms once in the court premises and such escapes then becomes easier.” Satyendra Dubey, who was an engineer in the Prime Minister’s golden quadrilateral project at Gaya, was killed in November 2003 while returning from the Gaya station to his home on a rickshaw. In course of investigation, police found Udai Kumar Choudhary, Mantu Kumar, Pinku Ravidas and Shravan Kumar as the culprits. Dubey’s murder caught the attention of the media as the deceased had written a letter to the then Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, complaining of “corruption and contractors-politicians-bureaucrats nexus” in the golden quadrilateral project. Facing pressure from political parties, the government handed over the case to the CBI, which registered charge-sheet against the four in September 2004.

But the CBI investigators found it a case of simple “robbery and murder” rather than a “pre-planned affair”. The assailants had snatched Rs 4,000 from the engineer before murdering him and the antecedents of the accused suggested that they were “petty road robbers”.

Mantu Kumar, too, escaped from the court in similar fashion on September 3, 2005, but was caught later. While Mantu and Pinku are in judicial custody, Shravan Kumar is on bail as he has turned a government approver.