Thiruvananthapuram, March 12: The Rajasthan police today confirmed that the man arrested by Kerala police on March 9 was indeed the 2006 rape convict Bitti Mohanty, whom they have been searching for after he had jumped parole.

A team of Rajasthan police headed by sub-inspector Hemender Singh, who had arrested Bitti in 2006 in connection with the rape of a German scholar, arrived in Kannur in North Kerala last evening.

The team met deputy superintendent of police K.S. Sudarshan, who is heading the probe in Kerala. Hemender then identified the man suspected to be Bitti on the basis of his birthmarks, especially a wound scar on one of his legs.

Sources said that though Kerala police had sought more scientific evidence such as blood sample report, they were told that the Rajasthan police had not collected any such data when Bitti was first arrested.

To gather more proof on the man, who had been living and working in Kannur under the assumed name of Raghav Rajan, a team of the Kerala police, which has the custody of the accused for 10 days, tonight left for Rajasthan.

The state police has already constituted a 21-member special investigation team to look into all possible aspects. The case is spread across four states — Kerala, Odisha, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh — and the officers would travel to these places to find out who had helped the suspect financially while he was on the run and also got him personal documents such as passport and voter’s card in the name of Raghav Rajan. The focus would be on Andhra Pradesh where he was living for three years before shifting to Kerala.

One team will also travel to Odisha to verify the genuineness of his engineering degree from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology.

The man suspected to be Bitty had got his passport while he was studying MBA in Kannur. This will also be probed. Sources say Bitti had changed SIM cards more than two dozen times after he jumped parole in November 2006.