A constable of the Ahmedabad City Police was apprehended on Wednesday by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch for allegedly killing a MICA student.
Priyanshu Jain, 23, was allegedly fatally stabbed in the Bopal area of the city on Sunday night following an incident of road rage. The accused has been identified as Virendrasinh Padheriya. He was posted at Sarkhej police station, said officials.
The development comes a day after the Ahmedabad Rural Police released the suspect’s sketch, based on an artist’s impression created with the help of the eyewitness Prithviraj Parakshitdas Mahapatra. An MBA student at MICA and batchmate of the deceased, Mahapatra was with Jain at the time of the incident.
short article insertOfficials on Wednesday evening said a team of the Ahmedabad City Police’s Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) were on their way to Ahmedabad from Punjab, where the constable Virendrasinh Padheriya had gone into hiding after the murder.
Speaking on this, DCP Ajit Rajian told The Indian Express, “Padheriya, a constable with Sarkhej police, has been arrested for the murder of Priyanshu Jain. The team is in transit and should be here on Thursday morning. After this, he will be handed over to Ahmedabad Rural Police.”
Notably, the officials used three-factor authentication to find the accused in this case. While several police staff allegedly recognised Padheriya from the sketch that had been circulated by the Ahmedabad Rural Police on Tuesday, the CCTV footage from the area showed that the vehicle, involved in the incident, was a black Tata Harrier SUV without any registration plate. The third clinching factor, said DCP Rajian, was that Padheriya had been absent without explanation from work for the previous two days and records showed that he owned a black SUV of the same make and model as seen in the CCTV footage.
The Crime Branch then traced the route of the vehicle to Punjab from where Padheriya was finally apprehended and placed under arrest on charges of murder. He will be handed over to Bopal police station, where the FIR has been filed in the case. 23-year-old Jain, who was studying in the second year, was allegedly fatally stabbed by the accused on Sunday night just hours after giving his measurement to have a suit stitched for impending job interviews.
According to the FIR filed at Bopal police station at 6:30 am on Monday, the incident took place after 10:30 pm on Sunday when Jain and his friend Prithviraj Parakshitdas Mahapatra, 28, were returning to the residential educational institute on Sunday night.