Sajal Barui after his arrest in 1993

From posing as a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officer to blackmailing youngsters by filming their sleaze secrets, Sajal Barui has done it all. And all this between September 2001, when he gave his jail-guards at Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital the slip, and February 2003, when he was re-arrested in Midnapore.

“We now have a blow-by-blow account of what he was up to when we had lost track of him,” said a senior police officer, about the boy who had killed his father, stepmother and stepbrother in 1993. Sajal was barely out of his teens when he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In September 2001, he fled from hospital, after he offered two of his guards beer spiked with sleeping pills.

Sajal then left for Mumbai and married a girl, identified as Silky. Returning to the city a few months ago, Sajal sent his wife to stay with a relative in Asansol, where she recently gave birth to a son. The boy is called Nanha.

“Sajal initially took refuge with Hatkata Bishu, who operated from Lake Town,” said an officer on the case. “It was there that he came in contact with Debu and Sartaj (and his girlfriend Tua), who operated from Phoolbagan and Salt Lake, respectively,” he added.

This marked the beginning of the second chapter of Sajal’s saga of crime, marked by blackmail with a difference, officials added.

Sajal zoomed in on the sleaze rackets in Salt Lake and the eastern pockets of the city.

“Tua was often used to lure the boys and their girlfriends,” an officer said. “She would capture some of the stuff on a concealed camera and then the gang would swing into blackmail mode.” When a local businessman’s son was lured into the honey-trap, the police picked up the sleaze trail without realising that it led to Sajal, operating as Sheikh Kamal.

But it was a more ordinary act of crime that finally felled the fugitive. He, along with Debu and Sartaj, entered a woman’s flat at Ultadanga, claiming they were from the CBI and accusing her of letting out her flat for prostitution. Once inside, they drugged the woman and cleaned out the flat. Debu and Sartaj were arrested a few weeks after that and helped the cops track down Sheikh Kamal, also known as Sajal Barui.