Lucknow, Feb. 9: One of the culprits in the murder of the Prime Minister’s grandnephew, Manish Mishra — who was pushed off a running train for protesting against eve-teasing — was arrested today after he apparently confessed his involvement in a drunken state.

Ramji Verma, a 32-year-old jewellery trader, was picked up by railway police from a Chhattisgarh village, about 55 km from Bilaspur, where he had fled after learning from newspapers Mishra’s relationship with Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Mishra, the grandson of Vajpayee’s sister Vimla, was returning home when the incident took place.

His body was discovered later near the tracks.

Bilaspur railway police have sent a message to their counterparts in Mathura — where the BSc student was thrown off the speeding Chhattisgarh Express on January 24 — urging them to take Ramji into custody.

Bilaspur railway superintendent of police Raj Kumar Dewangan said Ramji, a small-time trader who frequently travelled from Mathura to Delhi and Mumbai, had run away after the incident and taken shelter in a village in Champa where one of his friends live.

The police suspect the other accused in the case could be his associates in the jewellery business.

“Ramji has confirmed that he was among the group which had a tiff with the victim because he (Mishra) was protesting against eve-teasing of some girls in the train,” the superintendent of police said.

The arrest brought some relief to the embarrassed Uttar Pradesh administration.

Chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had earlier announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh and declared that the guilty would not be spared, looked cheerful.

“I am happy that the key accused has been arrested. The police in Mathura will now round up the rest of the gang on the basis of the key accused person’s statement,” he said.

Although Ramji claims that Mishra accidentally fell in the course of a scuffle and that nobody wanted to kill him, the police believe Mishra was thrown out of the train by the eve-teasers.

Police sources said it was a stroke of luck that led them to Ramji because if he had not spilled the beans under the influence of alcohol, nobody would have guessed his involvement in the crime.

“Arre, keya pata woh Prime Minister ka gotia ka hai? Hum se punga lis. Hum logo to unko fek diya train se. Pata nehi kisne mera nam de diya (Look, who knew that chap was the Prime Minister’s relative? He was trying to outsmart me. I gave him a push and he fell down. Later, God knows how the police came to know about me),” Ramji told some villagers.

Soon, the village was abuzz with the story, which ultimately reached the police.

In Mathura, the police also confirmed that Mishra’s co-passengers they interrogated had said it was a murder.

“Ramji’s arrest would now help us get to the bottom of the case,” said an officer with the Mathura railway police.