Ahmedabad: Ultimately the law will catch up with you if you have broken it. A 47-year-old man who is accused of killing four persons has been arrested after 16 years. The man murdered four persons and looted cash from an ‘ashram’ in Gujarat’s Mehsana district in 2004. The accused man was arrested by the state Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS), officials said Sunday.
The man identified as Govind Yadav was nabbed from his house in Delhi. He was then brought to Gujarat Thursday, said an ATS release.
Yadav, a native of Simthara in Madhya Pradesh, allegedly eloped with a woman from his village in 2003. He then landed in Gujarat where he survived by doing odd jobs.
Yadav married the woman and the couple took shelter at Motiba ashram (hermitage). The ashram was attached to the Mahakali temple near Untva in Kadi tehsil of Mehsana district in February 2004.
The temple and the ashram were managed by its trustee Chimanbhai Patel (70) who had returned from the United States. Its other residents were Sadhvi Samtanand Saraswati (35), caretaker Karman Ravalia (30) and Mohan Luhar (45), a mason-cum-helper.
Yadav, who was living under the alias ‘Mahendra Singh’, allegedly hacked all the four to death on the night of March 2, 2004. He used a sharp weapon to commit the dastardly crime. Then he and his wife fled with Rs 10 lakh in cash which they found in the ashram.
The Gujarat police had announced a reward of Rs 51,000 for information about him. However, Yadav succeeded in evading arrest all these years.
Yadav told ATS officials that after fleeing, he spent some time in Jaipur, Jhansi and a few smaller towns. Then he settled down permanently in Delhi in 2007. He will be handed over to Mehsana Police for further investigation, the ATS release said.