Patna, July 11: Police today said they have arrested Mukesh Pathak, a sharpshooter allegedly involved in the daylight murder of two engineers of a private road construction company in Darbhanga last year, from Jharkhand.
The government had announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh for the arrest of Pathak, who had terrorised contractors, businessmen and other professionals in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for the past few years. His mentor, Maoist-criminal Santosh Jha, is lodged in Gaya central jail.
Additional director-general (ADG) of police (headquarters) Sunil Kumar said Bihar police special task force (STF) personnel were camping in Jharkhand following intelligence inputs that Pathak was hiding there. Some suspects were picked up for interrogation and it was confirmed on Monday afternoon that one of them was Pathak.
He was nabbed while travelling in the S-11 coach of Jammu Tawi Express with some acquaintances, a highly placed police source said. Pathak had gone to the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu and was trying to reach Nepal via Jharkhand and Bihar, the source added.
ADG Kumar said the police had earlier carried out raids in Assam, Bengal, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir in search of Pathak, but in vain. "Our men were on the job and they finally traced him in Jharkhand's Ramgarh area," Kumar added. "It is a big catch for the state police as Pathak was absconding for over six months."
Pathak faces 16 cases of murder, extortion, kidnapping and atrocities against women in East Champaran, Gopalganj, Sheohar, Sitamarhi and Darbhanga districts.
The police will take Pathak, a resident of Mehsi in East Champaran district, on remand in all the important cases, including that of the murder of engineers Brajesh Kumar and Mukesh Kumar in Darbhanga on December 26 last year for not paying up extortion money.
Darbhanga special superintendent of police Satyaveer Singh said he has asked the investigating officer to seek remand of Pathak in the case.
In 2012, Pathak had killed another engineer on the Gopalganj court premises. Even after the state police launched a manhunt for him, he kept issuing threats to contractors. An official of construction company BSC-C&C Joint Venture Ltd had told the cops that Pathak was demanding extortion money from him since August 2015.
So far, over 14 members of the Santosh Jha gang have been arrested from Muzaffarpur, Patna, Sheohar, Sitamarhi and East Champaran districts in the Darbhanga engineers' double murder case.
The police will submit a chargesheet against Pathak soon to ensure speedy trial, ADG Kumar said.
Police investigations have revealed that Pathak, who joined hands with Santosh Jha in 2009, had also killed Gaurishankar Jha, self-proclaimed zonal commander of a banned Naxalite outfit, in Sheohar district in 2012.
"Pathak took command of the Santosh Jha gang after Jha's arrest from Bengal's South 24 Parganas district (Bishnupur police station area) in February 2014," an investigating officer said.
Pathak married Puja, an incarcerated woman criminal, in Sheohar jail on June 13, 2015. Puja was transferred to Shaheed Khudiram Bose Memorial Central Jail in Muzaffarpur and was found to be pregnant in August last year. She later gave birth to girl in judicial custody, prompting the jail officials to order a probe. She was awarded life term by a Muzaffarpur court early this year in a kidnapping case.
Additional reporting by Sanjay K. Mishra from Darbhanga
