Police have arrested a man who had been on the run for nearly 22 years after allegedly selling stolen cars in Kerala.
The accused has been identified as Baldev Singh, 60, a native of Ghodi village in Haryana’s Palwal district. He was taken into custody on Sunday from Tappal in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh district with the help of local police, PTI reported.
Describing him as a notorious vehicle thief, police officials said Singh allegedly stole cars from various states in northern India and then obtained forged documents from Odisha to sell the vehicles in Kerala’s Kannur.
The matter came to light when multiple police teams from different states came to Kannur while searching for the stolen vehicles.
In connection with the matter, as many as 10 cases were registered against Singh at the Kannur town police station in 2004, according to PTI. Police did arrest him in one of the cases, but he later went missing after being released on bail.
Police said that multiple warrants, including a long-pending warrant, were pending against Singh before the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court.
Over the past two decades, Singh stayed across multiple locations in Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. He is even believed to have joined a political party and rose to become a district-level leader.
He was traced during a drive to clear all the long-pending cases in Kannur district. After his arrest, Singh was brought to Kannur and produced before a court that remanded him to judicial custody.